


Vice

by Guede



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Blow Jobs, Crack Treated Seriously, Excalibur, F/M, Film Noir, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Life-Affirming Sex, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Murder Mystery, Past Abuse, Polyamory, Rough Sex, Supernatural Elements, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:51:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Fate throws up one hell of a mystery on Lancelot's doorstep. With green eyes.
Relationships: Arthur Castus/Guinevere, Arthur Castus/Guinevere/Lancelot, Arthur Castus/Lancelot, Gawain/Tristan (King Arthur 2004)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 13





	1. Prologue - The Client

**Author's Note:**

> Makes little attempt to be really historically accurate, and much effort to both be true to genre tropes and to riff on them. So there are likely going to be anachronisms and Americanisms all over the place. I originally wrote and posted this story to LJ in 2004 and am not interested in going back through and correcting.

In retrospect, Lancelot might have wanted to linger a little longer over his newspaper. But the corner café was already filling up with unwashed, vaguely rancid transients mumbling mushmouth accents over their nickel breakfasts, and where his seat was, the sun was spilling through the grimy windows to flood the place with suffocating heat. Figures that on one of London’s rare cloudless days, the weather would still manage to spoil the fun.

As he signaled for the waitress, he finished up the last article on the front page: some pseudo-culture article on a newly-discovered archaeological site. Fifth-century precious artifacts, come to light under a road being ripped up for the most recent politician’s attempt at looking like he was getting things done. The usual fight between preservationists and progressives had ensued.

“That it?” Red-slashed mouth, hennaed hair, and a way of getting the lashes of her right eye glued together when she tried winking flirtatiously.

By now, that sight had ceased to even ping on Lancelot’s consciousness and just flew right by him, like that little whirl of litter going by the window. He reached into his pocket, expertly separated two bills from his clip and handed them over with an absent smile, into which she could and probably did read anything she wanted. “Yeah. Sorry, but I’ve got to get on to the office.”

“Well, see you for coffee tomorrow,” she purred, coming off like a junk car with the muffler having fallen by the wayside years ago.

Still, he had to appreciate the attempt. Especially when walking into said rooms a few minutes later, only to be greeted by a rolled-up newspaper whacking a hair past his duck. Lancelot continued downwards into a squat and pivoted so he came up on Guin’s other side, well away from her swing. “What? Did you schedule me for an early-morning appointment and forget to leave a note again?”

Guin—Guinevere she preferred not to use, as it discouraged all the bad jokes they’d both heard a thousand times before—folded the newspaper and her hands against her hips, which were nicely outlined by her impeccable linen suit. She always had the perfect clothes, the perfect make-up, and the perfectly nasty disposition. Since it encouraged others to underestimate her, she also liked to pretend she was Lancelot’s secretary, but in reality, she was…reluctantly his partner. The reluctance was on both sides, the partnership born out of a one-night-stand gone deeply awry, and Lancelot still hadn’t figured out how she paid for her clothes. It certainly wasn’t out of his bank account.

“No, but it shouldn’t matter, you jackass.” She took another swipe at him, which nearly knocked off his hat. “Or else what’s the point of having hours?”

“The point of having hours is to divide the day into working hours and nonworking hours. Care to guess which category meals fall into?” Before she could try again, Lancelot took off his hat and thereby removed it from target range, then did up his tie. He could feel the unusually high humidity taking its toll on his hair, but he knew better than to try and tame that. Besides, over Guin’s shoulder he could see a shadow moving in his office.

Sharp-eyed as she was, she didn’t miss his shift in attention. With an exaggerated sigh, Guin flipped the newspaper onto the desk, then leaned against it and folded her arms. “He was waiting on the doorstep when I opened up this morning. Gave me the oddest look—I thought he was going to pass out on me.”

“Anything else?” Lancelot asked very softly, moving so he could get a better view through the ajar door. Tall, non-hysterical, and one passing flash showed him what looked like a damn expensive watch.

Guin merely gave him a hard stare.

It grated, but two years of fairly effective cooperation had taught Lancelot that sometimes, maintaining his pride could be immensely more painful than humoring the bitch once in a while. “All right, I’ll come in earlier tomorrow. Get lonely eating breakfast here alone, do you?”

She tilted her head and gave him a sweet smile. “You’re such a prick.” Then the sarcasm submerged and she became businesslike again. “He wouldn’t say a thing. I tried the weather, the sports pages, politics…I even asked him to help me with my hair. All I got was a neat bun and another odd look. He insisted on waiting for you.”

“Rich?” Lancelot mentally went over the state of their respective balances. Whatever extra sources of income Guin had, they apparently weren’t regular enough to give her much independence from detective work.

“Extremely.” One exquisitely plucked eyebrow arched. “I quoted him double, and he didn’t even blink.”

She seemed a little annoyed, which Lancelot chalked up to her cursing herself for not quoting triple. Well, that was her end—if she tripped up, she fixed it. “Good news for us, then. Probably just another socialite wanting to know where his wife trips off to every night. Ring up Tristan and Gawain, see if they’re busy.”

“No Dag?” Guin already had her exquisite manicure on the telephone.

“If I want to wreck a few blocks of downtown, I’ll let you know,” Lancelot drawled, putting his hand on the knob. “Till then, leave him alone. He’s helping Bors with the new brat.”

When Lancelot walked in, he had to pause just inside the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the dimness, since his would-be client apparently liked waiting in the dark. Behind him, Guin was murmuring sugar into the receiver; he could still feel her eyes boring into the back of his head. It was tempting to pull the door all the way shut and keep her out of it, but his practicality shot down that idea. As irritating as she was, Guin also happened to be very, very good at what she did.

In the far corner of the room, Lancelot kept a small bronze statue of a horse, which was the only payment he’d ever gotten for one messy case that had left a small round scar on his left arm. It wasn’t anything special—Galahad had taken one look and pronounced, “Twenty, but it’d be starving my poor old father,” who’d been dead seven years—but Lancelot liked it. So did the man, who had two fingers slowly running down its lifted foreleg.

He was dressed well enough to pass Guin’s critical eye, but unlike most of his kind, there seemed to be some actual hard-earned muscle under the flattering tailoring. Dark close-cropped hair, unusually long fingers with calluses, and when he turned around, strange faded-green eyes that sucked in what little light there was and burned it in a fast flare. Lancelot could see what Guin had meant by “going to pass out on her.” The man went from tanned to white in a heartbeat, and only slowly returned to normal color.

The hairs on the back of Lancelot’s neck prickled stiff enough to rub against his collar, but he was careful not to let that show on his face. It was amazing what just seeing a cool composure could do sometimes. “Lancelot Dulac. This would be my office.”

“It is…” The other man finally tore his eyes away to take in the rest of the room, as if he hadn’t had the past half-hour to do that. “You’re a private investigator?”

“That would be what it says on the front door.” So much for hopes that it’d be an open-and-shut; it hadn’t even been five minutes, and Lancelot could already smell the trouble rising from this one. He bit down on his frustrated sigh and pulled the door till it looked as if it were shut, then crossed the room. As he took his seat behind his desk, he waved towards the nearest other chair. “You weren’t looking for someone else, were you?”

Shaking his head, the other man sat down. He had a peculiar way of moving, something like a cross between nerves and deliberation, which nevertheless was smooth and silent enough to add to Lancelot’s internal wariness. And unlike most, he didn’t attempt to grin and stretch out a hand and otherwise make an effort to win Lancelot over to his point of view. That, at least, was good, given that Lancelot didn’t actually care about who was in the right. He merely dug up facts.

But the other man definitely wasn’t a talker. No wonder Guin had been so exasperated—Lancelot was beginning to agree with her. “So I believe Guin’s already—”

“If you have any other cases right now, I’d like for you to drop them and focus only on mine,” the man began, rather peremptorily. Then he caught himself, a little aghast at himself, and continued in a more modulated tone. “I will pay you compensation for the lost income.”

Outside, something made a faint rattle. Lancelot was too thrown to even think about how careless that was for Guin. “What?”

“I’m sorry.” The other man suddenly leaned back in his chair, lifting one hand to rub at his eye. “I’m being rude. My name is Arthur Ambrose, and—”

It was Lancelot’s turn to interrupt. “The hermit?”

This time, Guin didn’t make a sound, but her disgusted horror was palpably transmitted through the door. For his part, Lancelot was choking on his embarrassment. Ambrose was the last scion of the very, very old, secretive and wealthy Pendragon line, and most of the wild rumors about his reclusive behavior had something to do with cruelty, ruthlessness and esoteric perversions. If he wanted someone to disappear with no questions asked, he certainly had the wherewithal with which to make that happen.

Of course, that begged the question of what he was doing in a private investigator’s office. Lancelot…with Guin’s help…was the best in London, but he still didn’t move in Ambrose’s circles. And he was currently looking very stupid during a first meeting.

Fortunately, it seemed those rumors were completely unfounded. Ambrose was taken aback for a moment, but then relaxed into a sincere, if restrained, smile. “That would be me, I suppose. I prefer country living, but that’s unfashionable nowadays.”

“Sorry about that,” Lancelot muttered, searching for some kind of distraction. He settled for picking up a pen and pretending to take notes. The dim atmosphere was starting to strain his eyes, so he turned on his desk lamp as well; in adequate lighting, Ambrose proved to be quite the handsome man, if rather haggard. “We can discuss payment later. I generally find it better to tackle that after I’ve heard some of the details about what you want me to do.”

“Of course.” The other man paused. “It’s complicated. There are…I’ll try not to put you in a position where you have to…”

And as it always did, morality raised its ugly head. “Look, Mr. Ambrose: just tell me what you’d like done, and I’ll tell you what I can do. If I can’t do it, I probably can recommend someone who can. And spare me the sob story, all right? As far as I’m concerned, this is strictly a business transaction. You want sympathy, you go to confession.”

That came out slightly harsher than Lancelot had intended, due to his still being off-balance. He squeezed his hand around the pen and held his breath, watching the shadows graze Ambrose’s abruptly emotionless face and wondering if he’d gone too far.

But Ambrose ended up turning his head to the side and laughing into his hand, like someone was tickling him with a boathook. He did so for an unnervingly long two minutes before straightening up, gaze fixed on Lancelot. The man muttered to himself, something about no change, and rubbed at his eye again, which was getting quite red in the white part. Then he looked up with a kind of hopeless resignation in his face, but he seemed ready to get to business. “I’d prefer that you call me Arthur. It’ll cause less confusion. As for why I’m here--my family has a…talisman of sorts. An ancient broadsword, reputed to be Excalibur.”

“You can skip the story. I’ve heard it plenty of times.” Once again, Lancelot mentally cursed whatever moment of insanity had taken over his mother when she’d named him. It made him feel only a little better to know that a sizable part of his generation suffered from the same problem, due to some crank claiming to have discovered the legendary king’s grave around the time he’d been born.

Arthur—which did suit him better—obligingly did so. “Aside from the sentimental fortune it carries for me, it’s also worth a good deal of money.” He mentioned some numbers that made Lancelot blink at the other man’s casualness. “And it’s been stolen. I’ve been able to track it to here, but can get no farther. One of the consequences of never coming into the city, it seems.”

“I take it you’ve got suspicions as to who’s responsible?” Lancelot idly glanced down and, to his surprise, found that he’d been doodling a man riding a horse. God knew why—he slipped the pad under his desk and nonchalantly crumpled up the sheet, tossing it into the wastebasket.

“A cousin. Not a blood relation; my uncle adopted him as a child. His name is Ambrose Aurelian.” A sliver of white flashed in dry humor. “My family is somewhat unimaginative when it comes to names. He was disinherited a year ago when he murdered a woman…a prostitute up north.”

So trouble, or one part of it, had a name now. Guin was going to enjoy tracking this one down; she had a vigilante streak that cropped up occasionally, especially when it came to that side of crime. Something to do with a bad date she’d had before joining up with Lancelot. “He’s dangerous.”

“Very. But you need only concern yourself with finding the sword. Ambrose is my business.” Arthur’s tone unexpectedly hardened, solidifying the lines of his jaw and cheekbones into steel razors. For a moment, Lancelot forgot who, exactly, he was supposed to be worrying about.

But he’d never been one to invite complications, so he let it go without any regret. The less shadows he had to watch out for, the better.

The other man reached into his coat—Lancelot reflexively tensed, and Arthur gave him a sharp glance—and pulled out a photo, which he slid over the desk. Then he folded his hands between his knees, almost as if praying. “That is Ambrose from nine months ago—the last time we ever saw each other. He may have grown a beard by now; he’s had one on and off for the past few years. If so, it’ll be yellow and bushy.”

“Adopted, you said?” Clear enough from the photograph, which showed a distinctly Teutonic visage, while except for his height, Arthur had a vaguely Celtic cast.

“My uncle had many business interests in Germany,” the other man elucidated. For a newcomer to this side of the world, he was performing remarkably well. Usually Lancelot had to spend hours or even days extracting a straight, unembellished story from his clients, but this one was laying it out like a blanket on a bed.

That was worrying.

Lancelot filed the cautionary flag away in his mind and, after memorizing the important details in it, transferred the photo to his inner coat pocket. “Well, I think that’s enough to go on for now. Do me a favor and leave a phone number that you’ll answer most of the time with Guin, so if I have any more questions, I can contact you. I or her will also give you a ring once a week, or sooner if I find anything--”

“You’re done?” Arthur’s fingers unknotted and started to lift, then fell and half-curled inwards. He sounded oddly plaintive, and he was certainly looking at Lancelot the same way a kicked puppy did.

And _that_ bothered Lancelot, God knew why.

Before he could figure it out, the other man had slammed up the armor and was controlled, sober. When Arthur stood up, he even managed to look at his watch without seeming too studied about it. “Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome. Guin will settle the details about payment with you on your way out.” Something about the other man was still niggling at Lancelot, but he could tell he wasn’t going to get any more useful information out of Arthur now. His curiosity was being a pain in the arse, so he stomped on it and made himself light a cigarette instead of watching the other man leave.

After Arthur’s footsteps had faded from hearing, Lancelot stubbed out his cigarette and ambled out to join Guin. “Well?”

She was holding a check between her hands and staring at it like she could see through it. Doubtful, considering it was good-quality, heavy embossed stuff. “This is going to keep us solvent for a long while.”

“If we don’t end up paying through the nose for doctors,” Lancelot muttered, tucking his hands in his pockets. “Something’s off about him.”

“It figures,” she sighed. “Gorgeous and brunet. I think he’d go for either of us, too.”

He rolled his eyes and purposefully did not spend too much time looking at the signature looping over the lower right corner of the check. “Like we need another reason to argue. When Tristan and Gawain show up, send them right in. And give Galahad and Dag a ring, too—we’ve got to wrap up those other two cases today.”


	2. Footwork

The other cases were ha’penny stuff, only lasting longer than a few days because Lancelot had needed to accumulate more billable hours. Since Arthur’s generosity was more than going to take care of that, Lancelot was happy to wrap up matters.

“Cheating wives, cheating husbands, cheating employees…the bread-and-butter of the job’s cheating, and it’s boring as hell.” He signed off on the last paper and handed it to Guin so she could seal it into an envelope. Evening was still unseasonably warm, so then he undid his cuffs and tugged his tie loose.

“Humanity is mostly predictable. You should be happy about that, or else you’d actually have to work.” Guin delicately licked the flap and stamp, then patted them down, pressing the side of a nail along their edges to make sure they’d stick. Even she was beginning to look a bit ragged in the stuffiness, with tendrils escaping from her bun to straggle down her neck and the beginnings of dark shadows beneath her eyes.

Though Lancelot couldn’t see why she would be exhausted, given that he’d been doing most of the talking and the doing of the day. Two clients to be informed, medicated with Scotch, and sent home to have it out with their darling unfaithful spouses, while Guin had looked pretty in the front and handled calls from Tristan and Gawain. “This doesn’t seem too much like a leisure hobby to me,” Lancelot muttered, pulling at his collar. “Remember who ends up getting stitches most often?”

“I’d think that’s more of a commentary on your abilities, or lack thereof, than anything else.” She kicked back from the desk and locked all the filing cabinets in a quick succession of clicking, then stood up.

After a pointed moment, Lancelot got up as well and handed her the coat she wasn’t going to need. He slung his own over his shoulder and settled his hat on while she gathered up all the mail that needed to be sent out.

The last envelope wasn’t actually mail, but was merely a convenient way to shield the eye-popping retainer fee Arthur had scribbled out for them. They’d be getting even more upon successful completion of the case, and then Lancelot would finally be able to afford a short vacation. Three-hundred-sixty-four days of tracking the same kind of story over and over again, with only the minimum time for food and sleep, left him cranky and highly unimpressed with his fellow men. “Even this one’s probably about money. Arthur said his cousin was disinherited, didn’t he? This whole nonsense about the sword’s probably just revenge.”

“Probably. But it doesn’t matter what it’s about, as long as that money ends up with us,” she shot back, adjusting her hair. Then she took Lancelot’s automatically-extended arm and they went out to the car.

For all their sniping, when it came down to it, they had a nice arrangement. Guin had brains and beauty, and she didn’t mind getting her neat oval nails filthy once in a while. The rare times she was drunk, she was still one of the top lays Lancelot had ever had, and when they’d both sobered up the next morning, she wasn’t romantic enough to read anything stupid into it. In return, Lancelot didn’t bother trying to make her stay behind a desk or in a kitchen, or even really do the whole shining-knight-protects-damsel routine, which she seemed to appreciate. It worked. And it was easier than picking up a girl: they either came too innocent to handle the nastier parts of his job, or too cynical to be trusted when his back was turned. Guin wasn’t naïve by any stretch of the imagination, but neither was she going to fuck him over. She’d had her chances to do that, and she hadn’t. Anyway, they knew too much of each other.

“Tristan finished around lunchtime and said he was up for a night shift, so I set him tailing Arthur,” she said once they were cruising down the main streets. 

Despite the choke of car exhaust and general gutter stench, the tang of autumn could still be smelled; Indian summer was well underway in this part of the world. Lancelot cranked down a window, forced himself to breathe through the shit scents till he forgot about them, and then headed for downtown. “Nice to see you aren’t that starry-eyed, after all.”

“I’m as capable of disinterested admiration as you are.” She followed his idle glance to the redhead strolling across the road. Then Guin ducked her head and hands together, lighting up a cigarette. A trace of a knowing smile circled the long white cylinder.

“Disinterested? Disinterested would mean you didn’t spend lunch checking out his account spread.” Lancelot reached over and plucked a cigarette for himself from her case, snapping a flame to it with one hand. He blew the smoke out from the side of his mouth so it wouldn’t obscure his view of Guin being momentarily embarrassed.

But she recovered quick, making a negligent gesture with the glowing red tip. “Oh, you know.”

“Yeah, I do.” Another long drag, and Lancelot’s shoulders finally began to relax. “You going husband-hunting on me?”

This time, she smacked his shoulder hard enough to leave a sting, but her grin was wide enough to show a little teeth. “Don’t be ridiculous. You _know_ there’s something going on besides the sword. With the kind of money he’s throwing at us?”

“Well, we’ll see what Galahad has to say. If the fluff-headed dick remembered he’s supposed to see us tonight.” Lancelot swung the car into a curbside spot just large enough to hold it and cut the engine. Before he got out, he flipped his gun out of his shoulder holster and checked that it was fully loaded.

Guin, meanwhile, was finishing off her cigarette with an insolent suck. She arched and blew a perfect smoke ring at the ceiling of the car, while her jacket fell away to flash a whisper of blue-black steel. “Anyway, you told Gawain to start checking the records for both Arthur and Ambrose. You planning on fucking a client again?”

“Two-inch scar on my back says it’s a bad idea,” Lancelot muttered, reholstering his gun. He did a scan of the street, noting where the whores were ambling and where the connected men were dicing for pocket change, before opening the door.

“The three-inch one on my side says the same thing.” Guin had stopped the faux-tease for dead serious slow-burning anger, and it was enough to make Lancelot pause. But she was already putting a leg out, graciously smiling at the wolf-whistles, and by the time he could see her face, the moment had passed.

* * *

Galahad wasn’t exactly part of London’s criminal element, but if one wanted to know where the black market was moving, one saw him. Lancelot had the impression the man played a lot dumber than he really was, because no one liked a mathematical smartass.

“Lancelot, you’re a goddamned bastard and you owe me shitloads. I had two blondes lined up for tonight. Hey, lend me Guin and we’ll call it even.”

Or he was just one lucky son of a bitch with a good pair of ears.

“She’d take your balls and then some,” Lancelot drawled, draping an arm over Guin’s shoulders. That made her tense and glare at him a bit, but she knew this routine as well as he did. Hopefully, she’d save the payback for after they finally got to their apartment. “And I like you, Galahad, so I’ll spare you the agony.”

He and the other man didn’t go back nearly as far as he and Tristan and Gawain did, but Lancelot and Galahad had been trading information long enough to occasionally pick up each other’s bar tabs. Galahad’s day job was running a legitimate, if slightly rundown, auction house, while his real occupation was assessing all kinds of goods in the backalley. If he didn’t recognize something as belonging to someone he knew, he didn’t ask where it came from, and in return, his clientele made sure to do the actual shifting away from his property.

“Very kind of you,” the other man snorted, not bothering to get up from his seat. He took another sip of his Scotch.

The auction house was actually a converted tavern old enough to qualify as historical and Galahad had retained part of the bar, which gave the whole place a vaguely Prohibition air. But he didn’t have anyone playing bartender, and the lazy bastard was obviously not going to take that position upon himself, so Lancelot grudgingly hopped over the bar and poured himself a glass. Guin abstained, as usual.

After downing the remains of his drink, Galahad sprawled backward and dug out a grimy notepad from under the counter. “Make it short, all right? You want results by tomorrow, I’ve got to put the word out in the next hour.”

“Broadsword. Old.” Dainty as a cat, Guin brushed off the stool before she perched on it. Gold and blue-yellow flashed as she got herself another smoke. “Named Excalibur.”

“Christ, what do you two have now? One of those nutcase Druid freaks?” Lousy joke, which wasn’t out of the ordinary for Galahad. What was unusual was his lack of scribbling: unlike Lancelot, Galahad had a serious dependency on his notes. Any whiff of illicit activity generally made keeping a paper trail a bad idea, but Galahad was safe because his handwriting was complete shit to anyone except him and possibly Gawain.

Lancelot glanced at Guin, but she seemed to be busy watching her smoke curl into esoteric script-like swirls. He briefly debated how much to give Galahad, then decided that these particular details were going to leak from Ambrose’s end anyway, since the man would have to back up his claims if he wanted to unload the sword as the real deal. “No. Arthur Ambrose, of the Pendragons.”

If Galahad had still been drinking, he would’ve spit his mouthful out. As it was, he was doing a pretty good job of choking on air. “What?”

“The sword’s being offered up by a semi-relation named Ambrose Aurelian,” Guin added, blowing rings through rings. She flicked a sideways look at Galahad, who was chewing his lip. “Heard of him?”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell.” To judge from the rippling in Galahad’s eyes, something was ringing. Loud and clear. “What does this sword look like?”

One sniff told Lancelot the whiskey wasn’t worth lingering over, so he damned Galahad’s bad taste and just gulped it. “Don’t string us along, Galahad. How many fucking broadswords ever go on the black market? I can’t see as it’d be a very common item.”

“You’d be surprised,” Galahad muttered, hunching over. He folded his hands together and pressed knuckles to lips, thinking. Then he stilled. Slowly turned to give Guin a strangely considering look. “Hey, you said you lived in Whitechapel for a bit, didn’t you? Merlin’s territory?”

“I did live there, but I don’t mix with Merlin’s people.” Guin was very icy, eyes narrowed to slits and cigarette slotted between her fingers the same way a stiletto would be.

Taken aback, Galahad got off the stool and shoved his hands into his rumpled trousers, warily circling away. “It was a fair question. Besides, you aren’t talking to the society pages here; I couldn’t care less whether you knew him or not. I was just wondering if you’d heard that weird rumor he was spreading for a while.”

“What weird rumor?” Lancelot interrupted, determined to drag the conversation back to the matter at hand. As mysterious as Guin’s past was, it wasn’t currently relevant to business, and riling her up did nobody good.

“Stupid crap. Just that there was some kind of treasure buried under Whitechapel. Not gold or anything—more like the Holy Grail. He never did get too specific, but a couple of times he did bring in some museum-quality shit. Small, though. Spoons, cups, that kind of thing.” Galahad shrugged and stared out the window, watching the high-beams of passing cars fracture in the plate-glass. “Anyway, supposedly whatever was there was going to give him the authority to take over the city.”

Well, Merlin was universally considered bat-shit loco. Though he still ruled the East Side gangs with an iron fist, so no one could let him know without getting a shotgun up the arse. He and Lancelot had peripherally crossed paths, never seriously, and that was a good pattern to have, in Lancelot’s opinion.

“Doesn’t look like that’s happened, so I don’t care. The sword, Galahad,” Lancelot reminded him.

“This guy Arthur’s really got a stick up your arse.” For whatever stupid reason, Galahad seemed amused. Fortunately for him, he started unloading information right after that, so Lancelot didn’t have to race Guin for the right to beat some sense into the moron. “Actually, grapevine did start muttering about an ancient broadsword about three days ago. But I haven’t heard anything concrete. It’s just talk so far, and not a sign of it. But Merlin seems to be interested. That’s why I brought him up.”

Something snapped. Or seemed to—a quick check showed nothing broken. But Guin didn’t look happy, and when Lancelot came around front, he noticed a new dent in the battered old bar, right behind her high heel. He absently flashed Ambrose’s photo at Galahad by way of excuse for moving.

Eyebrow raised, Galahad threw in the last few details. “No one looking like that’s been around. And I haven’t heard anything about an Ambrose Aurelian, but he’s probably not using that name.”

“Yeah, well, let us know if he starts. Or if that sword shows up.” Lancelot was staring at Guin, who was staring back without an inch of give in her eyes. Goddamned bullheaded bitch. Some days, she almost wasn’t worth the trouble. “But anyway, who’d he go to, if he did decide to go to someone?”

“There’s only two guys who’d move that kind of antique shit. First one’s Bede—you know him. Second one’s German. Italian guy, but he likes German opera, hence the nickname. He doesn’t have a fixed office; come back tomorrow and I’ll have his latest address.” By now, the silent byplay had managed to penetrate Galahad’s dense mass of curls, and he was regarding both of them with a worried expression. “Hey. So…”

“That’s good. Thanks, Galahad; we’ll be in tomorrow.” The other man was going to wonder about Lancelot’s abruptness—fine. Nothing could be done about that, whereas it was clear that Guin’s problem was going to be throwing off the rest of the night if Lancelot let it. So he crooked his arm at her and dared her not to take it.

She wasn’t an idiot, and she knew about scenes and the making thereof. Consequently, she took his arm and haughtily walked out with him.

He gave her the length of the drive to their apartment, and even parked before he brought it up. “What the hell was that?”

“Was what?” Apparently, Guin wanted to see how much it would take for Lancelot to hit a girl.

With cool-eyed ladies like her, hitting just fulfilled all their internal justifications. Besides, the car was too cramped for any kind of decent angle. So instead, he waited till she was bending to touch cigarette tip to lighter flame, then seized her wrist and dragged her half over the seat. Her other hand went towards her jacket, but he slapped it against her side. Blew out the flame singing the air between them. “Guin. Don’t fuck with me.”

“As opposed to just fucking you?” The hardness in her eyes was cracking a little faster than the hardness in her voice, but it still wasn’t going to his taste. “Put it this way: I don’t live in Whitechapel now. And Merlin’s still there.”

“Don’t you usually kill men who fuck you up?” Lancelot tightened his hold on her wrist, but she only lifted her chin a little. For a second—but he held onto his temper and refused to rise to the bait. When he pushed her back and let go, she didn’t resist. But he still didn’t make the mistake of assuming he’d done much except mess up her clothes a little; that made him respect her and want to rip out her prissy little bun at the same time.

She was getting pretty good at reading him, because the next thing she did was jerk out the pins holding her hair up, making little angry snaps of the wrist as she did. The hair fell in an attractive cascade of dark waves, which softened the angles of her face into hurt.

Lancelot folded his arms over the steering wheel and swallowed till he could taste the last lingering burn of the whiskey. “Hasn’t even been a day, and I’m already beginning to regret taking this one.”

“The grudge between Merlin and I has nothing to do with this.” Guin finally got her cigarette lighted and puffed it in uncharacteristically nervous jabs. “And I can’t kill him. It’s…something like a family matter.”

“Great.” The night just kept getting better and better.

She was looking at him, but Lancelot wasn’t about to look back. If she wanted to pull a sympathy ploy, she was going to have to try harder than that. “I can’t kill him,” she repeated. “Doesn’t mean I have any problems with anyone else trying.”

Rolling his eyes, Lancelot reluctantly turned to face her. “I don’t run a hitman service, Guin. Not even for you.”

“Well, it was worth a try.” At first, Guin seemed to be serious, but then the corners of her mouth twitched and suddenly her smoke was doing an impossible dangle from a razor grin. She rescued the cigarette just in time and leaned over to give Lancelot a half-sarcastic peck on the cheek. “If I wanted to fuck with you, I’d just clean out your account and have the locks changed before I skipped town. Have a good night, and remember to come in early tomorrow.”

“Bitch…” Shaking his head, Lancelot twisted the key in the ignition. His mouth hurt, and when he checked in the rearview mirror, he could see that it was because he was trying not to laugh. Whatever Guin did, she at least was being herself.

Like when she stopped on his side after getting out. “Early, damn it. I told Tristan to meet us at seven in the office to report. And I’ll even make coffee. So if you don’t show, I’ll hang you by your balls from the roof.”

Lancelot waved her off and pulled away from the curb, still laughing to himself. Before Vanora had gotten herself knocked up for the first time, Bors had used to say that two years was the longest a man and a woman should stay together if they weren’t planning on making an honest end of it. After that, there was just too much between them. Seemed like the man had known what he was talking about.

* * *

Given what Galahad had said, Lancelot wasn’t expecting much to happen just yet. It appeared that the play had just rolled into town, and everyone was still trying to find their marks. A good time for him to sidle around backstage, check out a few leads before the city started heating up.

Bede was a venerable old bastard that in his day, had nearly managed to knot all the ends that trailed into London’s vast black market around his fingers. He’d bettered that by managing to survive to the incredible age of fifty-nine, which among racketeers was about equal to Methuselah. Nowadays he’d mostly pulled out of the business in favor of keeping a dusty, sepia-stained bookstore—apparently, he’d caught bibliophilia from a first edition Doré—but he still had some rare connections that let him move the occasional high-end piece.

Way back when Lancelot had first set up an office, Bede had taken a liking to him and showed him a few. He’d never properly thanked the man, but he did try to send the old crank a bottle of decent cognac at Christmas. And sometimes, if he was in the neighborhood, he’d drop in for a few minutes. That was usually late at night, but Bede kept odd hours anyway, so he never seemed surprised to see Lancelot.

Therefore, the front door to Bede’s store should have been open. Frowning, Lancelot touched the accelerator and cruised past into a nearby alley, where he parked. He was starting to regret not changing into a darker suit when he’d dropped Guin off; in the hazy pale glow of the streetlights, his clothes glowed too much. But that couldn’t be helped much, aside from tossing his hat into the backseat.

Lancelot put his hand on the door handle, then paused. After a moment’s thought, he bent over and got the shotgun out from under the seat. Then he eased himself from the car and down the street, careful to be both as casual and as silent as possible.

In fact, the store’s door was not completely closed. A sliver of yellow light remained between it and the frame, looking entirely too inviting. Biting his lip, Lancelot extended the shotgun and carefully nudged with its tip till that space was large enough for him to slip through. He pushed the door shut behind him with an elbow.

Inside, everything seemed normal: the rows of books were in their usual half-disordered state, the dust layer seemed about the right depth, and the lights were on. But it was strangely quiet—no, actually there was a sound. Rustling papers, from the back. On the other hand, Lancelot couldn’t hear any other signs of humanity. For that matter, the place didn’t have the feel of an inhabited set of rooms, which didn’t bode well.

He counted to ten while adjusting his jacket so he could get to his gun more easily, then edged along one shelf, shotgun first. Despite his care, every step seemed to be unnaturally loud, making the floorboards creak and whine like whipped dogs. When he rounded the first bookshelf, his nerves seemed to twang in his ear at seeing nothing. And Lancelot couldn’t even relax then—Bede hadn’t been an idiot, and so the man had arranged his store so that from the back, he could defend himself against any comers.

Thank God it was a small place, because the eeriness of the atmosphere took its toll on Lancelot. By the time he finally made it to the back corner, he was about ready to shoot the rats out of the walls. He nearly blew off the wispy white-haired top of Bede’s head when he saw the figure bent over the desk, like always, and with no one else in sight. “Jesus Christ, Bede. You really take your hobby too seriously for it to be a—”

Either Bede had spilled some red wine, or…Bede didn’t drink red wine. Lancelot swallowed down on his stomach clench and carefully walked around the drying puddle he’d just noticed till he could see Bede’s face.

He had to blink. And then he put a hand to his face, pinching at his nose till the slight dizziness went away.

A quick mental review showed that Lancelot hadn’t left any traces the police would notice, barring a witness somewhere, and knowing this area of town as he did, he knew that possibility wasn’t even going to come up. It’d be hours before anyone found Bede. Judging from the stickiness of the blood on the floor, it’d probably been hours since Bede had had his last conversation. “Fuck.”

Tucking the shotgun under his arm, Lancelot leaned over to see what Bede had been working on: the weekly accounts. “Well, that’s a healthy enough balance to get you buried right.”

He started to straighten up, but a stray squiggle of ink caught his attention. The last line was only partially filled, with “assessment f—” drifting off the page. A check of the floor found the bloody pen that had dropped from Bede’s fingers whenever he’d gotten his throat slashed.

Whoever had done had to have stood from behind, holding Bede over the desk so that the thick layers of papers scattered over it had absorbed most of the blood spray. Bede was a pretty heavyset man, so his body had initially blocked the view of the desktop from Lancelot. Come to think of it…a close look at that final line revealed that either Bede hadn’t entered a name for the fee-payer, or that it’d been blotted out with blood. But the entry had been made in a different-colored ink from the rest, so clearly it hadn’t been a normal transaction.

Lancelot stood back, muttered an apology to his old friend, and then took out a handkerchief. He used it to gingerly lift Bede’s hand so he could peek at the preceding pages: mostly black ink, with the occasional blue-ink entry. One of them was on a date Lancelot had been in, and he remembered Bede waxing poetic on Chinese jade daggers for no apparent reason—then. “So he’s finally showing Excalibur around,” Lancelot muttered, setting Bede’s wrist back on the ledger.

Walking around the room didn’t yield any more information, other than that whoever had done Bede in knew what they were doing. There weren’t any tracks in the backalley, either, and so Lancelot ended up taking that route back to his car. He got in, put the shotgun away, and stared at the alley wall. “_Fuck_.”

* * *

“…look, Gawain. Just maneuver the police over there, all right? Tell them there’s been a robbery. A prowler. An escaped lion. I don’t care.” The goddamned phone booth was too small and too clear and generally made Lancelot feel like a target, all gussied up like store windows at Christmas. And for some reason, it wasn’t letting the smoke from his cigarette out, so he was just about choking on the acrid fumes. He wasn’t in a good mood. “Bede’s dead, and I think he deserves to be taken down to the coroner’s before the rats get at him.”

*You don’t want to have his body taken care of by--*

According to his watch, it was just shy of midnight. Witching hour, if he actually believed in that superstitious shit. “Bede had his throat opened up left-right, up-down, then got propped in place with a ruler in his jaw. I don’t like it, but those official shits are going to have to check it out. Get a nice drinking buddy of yours, get him down here, and get me a copy of the coroner’s report as soon as you can, all right?”

Muffled exclamation. *Shit. You call up Galahad yet? I should get down there…*

There went the fiver Lancelot had had on that bet. “I was about to. I need to get to that other fence he mentioned—German.”

*Right. I’ll get Bede taken care of…let you know when the funeral is, too. You want me to get Tristan to go with you? I could probably find him in fifteen minutes…*

Tristan. Tristan was following Arthur, who had definitely left out important bits of story. Generally speaking, if one wanted to make money off stolen goods, one didn’t kill off the men who could make that happen. “No, let him be. I need him to keep doing what he’s doing.”

*If you say so.* Gawain sounded reluctant about it, but he hung up without another word.

Lancelot finished off his smoke in a fury and smashed the butt against the frame of the booth. As he stepped out into the chilly breeze, he flicked it over his shoulder. Two deep breaths, and then he went back in to call Galahad. And Guin.

* * *

It turned out that Guin was busy calling someone. Long call. Two tries, spaced five minutes apart, and she still hadn’t gotten off. Tomorrow morning, Lancelot was not only going to show up early, but he was also going to come bearing a nice big bone to pick on her damned little-girl smile. But for now, he had to run with the address Galahad had, after a few seconds of complaining and fussing, managed to hook.

German currently appeared to be working out of a pub called the King’s Lake. At least, he’d been showing up regularly there for the past week—Galahad couldn’t be any more specific than that on short notice. As ill-tempered as Lancelot was, he believed that. Galahad was an annoying shit, but he knew his business inside and out, and he had a reasonably good sense of with whom he shouldn’t fuck. Plus Lancelot had mentioned forgetting about the most recent bar tab Galahad owed him.

Coming up to the pub somewhat relieved the strain on Lancelot, as the windows showed a full complement of merry drunks. The place wasn’t far enough into the slums for murders to be considered part of the evening entertainment, so it looked as if there was a good chance German was still around.

It only took a moment to spot the fence: German was small and dark, with a gray-streaked goatee, while the rest of the pub’s occupants appeared to be pure Irish. Lancelot signaled to the bartender, ducked a few sloshing punches, and slid into German’s booth. “Hi.”

The other man, who’d been cheering on his guy in the brawl, suddenly jerked around and slammed back into the seat, eyes wide. “Who the fuck are you?”

Just then, two hands squeezed through the living wall of flesh around the table. They deposited one large mug of the home brew and a small glass of whiskey, which Lancelot merely sipped at after he’d seen the less-than-clean state of the glass. German warily took the beer with both hands and retired into his corner, sucking on the booze like a nursing baby. Now that Lancelot was in a position to see, he could tell that the other man had had one hell of a conversation not too long ago. “Nice bruises. You knock up the neighborhood virgin?”

“I repeat, who are you?” Interestingly enough, when German calmed down, his accent was almost as posh as Arthur’s.

Up front, the fight had finally started to engulf spectators. Sighing, Lancelot hooked a hand around the other man’s arm and dragged him out. By way of passage, he flung a few coins over the crowd’s heads; an arm shot out of the seething drunken waves and caught them, then slowly disappeared beneath the surface. “Come on. I don’t feel like talking in the middle of this mess.”

Outside, German leaned up against the front of the building, cradling his beer like it was his child. He squinted at Lancelot, then nodded. “I thought I recognized you. You’re that private eye that fucked up the Kay campaign.”

“As the photos clearly showed, it was Kay that was doing the fucking.” Lancelot straightened out his jacket and checked it for any stains. “Not my fault he couldn’t keep it in his wife’s cunt.”

“What do you want?” While still nervous, German seemed slightly more relaxed. Curiously enough.

Eyebrow up, Lancelot stepped forward till he was in German’s space, smelling the guy’s lack of personal care and his sudden rise in fear. “I hear you move big antique items. Like broadswords.”

“Oh, fuck, and I was thinking you weren’t here for that.” The other man looked down at his shuffling feet, looked sideways at the empty street, then stared back at Lancelot. His expression had changed, and was now not so much afraid as…sympathetic? Amused and pitying. “You don’t know what you’re in for.”

Lancelot stepped back and examined his hand for any little cuts that might sting. Then he punched the jackass.

First, the beer splashed out and slipped through German’s fingers to splatter booze and glass on the ground. Then the rest of him went down, keeling sideways and back so his slipping feet riffled car oil and beer at Lancelot’s shoes.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lancelot muttered, wiping his knuckles off on his trousers. Only five minutes in that place, and already his clothes had the faint but persistent odor of fried grease and stale vomit. “Broadsword. Excalibur. Probably being hiked around by a big blond bastard who speaks with the accent you should have, given your name.”

“Fuck my name. You think it says shit about me? Some detective you are.” Slow and shaking, German got back onto his feet. He gingerly fingered his swelling lip, shooting visual daggers at Lancelot that felt about as dangerous as gnats. “Jesus. Like my neck wasn’t hurting already—okay, okay. Calm down. Look, weaponry’s not really my thing, but I know a bit. And I wasn’t gonna touch that sword with a ten-foot pole.”

The man’s crumpled hat had fallen off to reveal much more gray than Lancelot had been expecting. Overall, German had the look of a professorial type fallen on bad times—probably fucked one too many students over the desk. “So?”

“So I said I wasn’t sure, my specialty’s porcelains and jewelry, go see Bede. The fucker didn’t like that answer—” cuff tugged to show dark finger-shaped blotches “—but he went. Good riddance, too. He can hie himself to hell without taking me along for the ride. Why do you care so much, anyway? He screw your mother?”

“Bede’s dead.” Lancelot walked off a little to stand by German’s hat, which had soared into a pile of broken wood. After a moment, he picked up the sad wreck of felt, brushed it off, and tossed it back at the gaping mouth.

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” German didn’t even lift his hands to catch the hat, but only squatted there on the corner and rocked himself. When Lancelot came back around, due to the car being parked on the other side of the man, German did rouse himself long enough to kick at Lancelot. “You idiot! Then that means it’s real and we’re all fucked! And I’m dead! I’m dead!”

The sky was…dark and dreary, like usual. It was probably going to rain tomorrow. “You sound pretty alive to me. So it actually is a genuinely ancient sword. What, does that mean it’s worth a—”

“No, it means it’s _Excalibur_.” Spitting and snarling, German clawed himself upright and lurched out across the road. Every two steps, he’d stop to shoot another glare at Lancelot. His accent, initially no more than a trace, was getting thicker by the curse. “You fucking brainless idiot. Excalibur’s worth can’t be counted in money—”

Scorching light suddenly swamped the street, so intense that Lancelot could almost feel it shoving him backwards. He threw up an arm, and then he registered the squealing wheels. “Shit!”

Except by the time Lancelot could see something besides pretty dancing dots, German was a sad lump of secondhand suit and mashed brains. Behind Lancelot, the fighting sounds had ceased, and people were slowly filing out of the pub to see what had happened.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Goddamn it, he was the only one of you that paid on time!”

“Anyone get a number on that car?”

“What the hell was that?”

Just as Lancelot was thinking about moving towards his own car, another one cruised around the corner. Police. And someone had grabbed his arm and was babbling in his face about what did he see?—some patrol dick taking his breaktime in the pub, now deciding to cover up the lapse with overzealousness.

Wonderful.

* * *

In the end, the police figured him for an innocent friend who just happened to be around when some disgruntled client ran German down. It helped that Gawain sold liquor to most of them. Nevertheless, the whole damn process of giving a statement and satisfying the resident crusader kept Lancelot at the precinct station for the rest of the night. By the time he finally got back to his place, he had just enough strength to yank off his tie, hang up his hat and collapse on the sofa.

Morning tasted like shit, but the last thing Lancelot needed was more bitchy Guin, so he stumbled up. Showered, shaved, changed his clothes. Cleaning up helped to scrape a few layers of fatigue from him and gave him time to organize the gleanings from last night, so when he walked into the office, he was beginning to feel fairly decent.

“Coffee?” Guin raised a full pot, steaming a pleasant aroma past her winning smile. Of course, she looked like she’d never had a bad night in her life.

“Sure.” Lancelot sat himself down at her desk and watched her pour out…three mugs. Then he pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Tristan. Wherever the fuck you are, get out where I can see you. This isn’t April Fool’s.”

When Lancelot took away his hands, Tristan was seated in the chair in front of him. The other man never failed to get on Lancelot’s nerves, but at least he usually did what he was told. And he always brought results.

Tristan’s background was a running question among the small group of people for whom Lancelot would even consider buying a meal once in a while. According to Gawain, he’d opened the door one morning to find the weird quiet man napping on his doorstep. He had jumped back, startled to hell, and Tristan had just waltzed in and fixed Gawain’s broken oven. Then he’d gotten himself hired for some small job Gawain had been advertising in the papers, and had somehow turned that into a regular occupation of getting fucked by Gawain and tracking down defaulting payees—Gawain did some smalltime lending as well as running a good liquor warehouse—or whomever else Lancelot needed to know about.

In person, he wasn’t too impressive, aside from the odd things on his cheeks. Gawain said they were tattoos, and not scars. Lancelot had long since decided to just take Gawain’s word for Tristan; it simplified things. “So how’s our client?”

The other man opened his mouth, but before anything could come out of it, a thick file of papers slapped down. Guin turned back to the coffees and started dosing them with cream. “He wasn’t lying about Ambrose—there is such a man, and Arthur’s uncle did have him disinherited. Seems like it was the last thing the uncle did before he died. Arthur’s been living mostly on the Continent for the past few years.”

A quick peek at the folder’s contents showed that despite her fine make-up job, Guin hadn’t had much sleep, either. She must have woken up early and gone round to various municipal offices to collect info from her connections. “Well, looks like you kept yourself busy. Have a nice chat last night?”

Her hand paused over the sugar bowl. “Pardon?”

There was an insistent twinge in Lancelot’s back and the side of his neck, where he’d slept wrong on the couch. Next time, he should collapse on the floor if he couldn’t make it to the bed. “I tried to call you last night. Twice. Around midnight. But the line was busy.”

“Why were you calling?” She pronounced the words with the precision and delicacy of a surgeon. And the sharpness of one, too.

Lancelot started to snap something, but then thought about it. He reached for the morning newspaper and did a fast leaf-through, finding the nothing he’d expected. “Huh. Guess murders don’t even count as hot news any more, unless they’re rich and pretty.”

Tristan resettled himself into a position where he could watch both of them. Meanwhile, Guin calmly handed around the mugs.

“Bede’s dead. Slashed throat. And I had the privilege of seeing German run over in the street,” Lancelot said, locking his eyes with Guin’s. He took the coffee, but set it aside for the moment. “That’s why I was calling.”

Well, whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it obviously hadn’t been that. Her eyes went round, her lips parted a little, and her expression was of general surprise. “Bede?”

“Apparently, that sword isn’t your average illegal sales item. Seems like all Ambrose wanted was a confirmation that he had the right one.” Nice and slow, Lancelot stretched his arms over his head and yawned in Guin’s face. As he brought his arms down, he tilted an inquiring smile at her. “So. Who were you calling? Get a new boyfriend I don’t know about? Catching up with old friends, maybe from Whitechapel?”

Her pretty jaw hardened, and for a moment, Lancelot thought she might try to slap him. But for all that could be said about her, Guin did have class. She backed off and picked up her own cup, looking insufferably derisive. “You’re a moron, you know. The only way anyone’s getting me back in Whitechapel is if they’re dragging my dead body.” Pause to take a dainty sip. “I was calling Arthur. It occurred to me that Ambrose might have been in the city before, and maybe he had friends.”

“It took you that long?” Lancelot asked, skeptical. Though the point she brought up was a good question; members of the nobility usually stuck out like sore thumbs when they went slumming, but there was the occasional peer who knew how to blend in.

“It took me that long because he wouldn’t get off the phone,” Guin retorted, rolling her eyes. She was wearing her hair down today, and one stray strand kept wanting to dangle into her coffee. In the end, she set down her cup and pinned the lock behind her ear. “He must be lonely. Kept trying to make conversation about where I was from, how long I’d known you, if I liked _history_…didn’t make sense. But anyway, Ambrose is about as much of a stranger to our end of London as Arthur is.”

After a long minute of scrutinizing her, Lancelot decided he believed the gist of Guin’s story. Though she had many talents, hiding her annoyance wasn’t one of them, and Arthur had clearly said something to set her off-balance. Given Guin’s addiction to self-control, that was a guaranteed way to irritate her. “I see. Well, I’m sure you helped Arthur feel better,” he teased, taking up his coffee and trying it. Then he tried not to make too embarrassing a face. “There’s no sugar in here.”

“If you want sugar…” Guin posed with coffee in hand, hip suggestively thrust to the side and come-hither look over her shoulder “…get it your damned self, you suspicious son of a bitch. And get out of my space so I can get to work.”

With an exasperated sigh, Lancelot got up and waved Tristan into his office. Expressionless, the other man walked in and perched on Lancelot’s desk, calmly drinking his coffee. Oddball that he was, he liked it straight up. Turkish-strong if he could get it. Lancelot, on the other hand, preferred to have some sweetener to cut the aftertaste. However, the sugar bowl in his room was empty. “Damn.”

Tristan shrugged and kept looking at him with a blank face.

“You’re annoying me,” Lancelot grumbled, screwing up his willpower and downing the coffee as it was. The stuff was all right in terms of quality, but still, it was yet another irritant in a lousy, lousy twenty-four hours.

“Sorry.” The other man glanced out the door at Guin, who was making phone calls with purr in her voice and many glowering side-looks in Lancelot’s direction.

Closing his eyes seemed to speed up the dissolution of coffee into his system—or it at least gave the illusion of doing so, and one was as good as the other in terms of effect—so Lancelot did that. “No, you’re not. Tell me about Arthur.”

It didn’t take long for Guin to wrap up her work and casually wander back into the room, where she tucked herself into an armchair and propped her chin on her hands, listening intently. So was Lancelot, but not for any obvious reasons: what Tristan had to tell was predictable and boring. Arthur retiring to one of the numerous elegantly discreet high-end hotels, Arthur stopping at certain solicitors’ offices…no different from any other man on a business trip.

“Then he stopped at that new archaeological dig—the one in yesterday’s papers.” Thoughtful, Tristan ran a finger around the rim of his empty mug. For someone who’d been on his feet for the better part of a day and the whole night, he seemed oddly awake. “That was this morning, just before I came here. He was still looking around when I left.”

“So the man’s got an interest in history. Well, we’re trying to find an antique for him. Doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary.” Lancelot kicked off the side of his desk and spun his chair around to arch an eyebrow at Guin.

She was leaning back in her seat, arms folded across her breasts and lips folded into cold aggravation. “And now you’re taking back what you said about him being ‘off’?”

“No. What I’m saying is that whatever side-game Arthur has going, I don’t think it has much to do with your little flirtation.” Her response was to glare fireballs at Lancelot, but he merely grinned and waved her off. “Come on, Guin. I know you. If you really don’t want to talk to a man, you don’t.”

In the outer room, the phone rang and thus gave Guin a great exit. She gracefully levered herself up, hair doing an insolent flip, and clicked her way out of the office. “I suppose you would know, wouldn’t you?”

It was hard, but Lancelot managed to keep himself seated and relatively calm. He rummaged around for something to take off his irritated edge, but only came up with a pen and some scrap paper. “Sometimes I wonder why the hell we put up with each other,” he muttered, doodling.

“I didn’t know Bede was dead,” Tristan said, leaning forward to dangle his hands between his knees. Like a crouching cat, he was craning his head to look at Lancelot; that position almost obscured the sympathy in his eyes in shadow. Almost.

“Guess you haven’t seen Gawain yet, have you? I rang him, let him know, and got him to handle the police and the funeral.” Lancelot dug the tip of his pen deep into the sheet and dragged it in a slow circle. For some reason, the sound of nearly-ripping paper fit his mood. “Shit. He’ll have to get German’s coroner’s report, too.”

The other man nodded. “I’ll tell Gawain.”

Then he just stared at Lancelot, like he thought Lancelot was going to fall open or something. A snarl started to climb Lancelot’s throat. “What?”

Tristan moved his shoulders in a gesture that might have been a shrug, then got up. “Bede was a better man than most.”

“Mostly because he knew when his enemies were ripe for killing,” Lancelot snorted, swallowing down on the sour taste in the back of his mouth. He scribbled a few more random lines, then tossed the pen at its holder. And missed, goddamn it. It was like even the laws of nature didn’t want to swing in his favor now. “He got more years than most, had himself some fun. And now that’s one less card I have to send out at Christmas.”

Of course, the other man completely ignored his babbling. That was the sensible thing to do, and Tristan was nothing if not eminently sensible. Lancelot suddenly had an urge to make the other man react irrationally.

God, he was being an idiot. And Tristan was already saying goodbye to Guin, so Lancelot’s reflexes were slow as well. Thoroughly disgusted with himself, Lancelot started to crumple his doodle-sheet. As he did, he happened to glance down at it.

A stick-man with what apparently were supposed to be swords, but which looked more like sausages. Artistic Lancelot clearly was not, so he’d better stick to what he knew. Which, for lack of any good leads, currently appeared to be tracking down Ambrose the hard way. Checking hotel ledgers, chatting with certain bartenders, keeping an ear to the ground to see who might be inclined to help out Ambrose. “The bastard’s definitely got someone on his side.”

“Are you sure? If this sword is that valuable, maybe there’s a fight going on for it.” Framed like a pin-up, Guin was leaning against the doorframe. Her lips twitched, then stilled as some consideration darkened her face. “Galahad said Merlin might be interested. If that’s true, he’d see nothing wrong in ripping London apart for it.”

“Yeah, that could be going on. But Bede’s last entry was for an assessment fee on a black market deal, so Ambrose had to be the one that killed him. German’s questionable—he got mowed down after he’d seen the sword, and I didn’t get a chance to see the car or driver—but still, why would Merlin want to kill a fence?” Lancelot pivoted himself out of the chair and dropped the stupid little drawing in the wastebasket. Hands in pockets, he ambled over to her and kept thinking out loud. “Hell, German was probably Merlin’s best bet for finding Ambrose and the sword.”

Guin tapped a finger against her lip, running some kind of mental calculation in her head. Generally she seemed to get a weird kick out of unraveling puzzles, but today she sounded as if she’d rather be gutting fish for a living. “Merlin…has a very unusual idea of what constitutes betrayal. You see, in his head, he _is_ king of the city—it’s just that not everyone’s been smart enough to accept it yet. So he might have killed German simply because the man didn’t go running to him and let him know the moment Excalibur showed up.”

There was a curious undertone to her voice, like steel on rock. And when Lancelot looked a little more sharply at her, he noticed that she was struggling to keep her jaw muscle from twitching. One check at her hands showed them to be in fists. “What’d he do to you?”

That startled her, bringing her chin up and widening her eyes as she did her level best to visually flay Lancelot. But after a second, she seemed to figure out that Lancelot was actually just curious, and not mocking. “When’s the last time I asked you about your history?”

“Right now, my history isn’t trying to sneak into a case,” Lancelot replied, not nearly as sarcastic as he wanted to be. His gut was being squirmy and his head was full of a feeling he badly didn’t want to identify as pity. Hard-nosed bitch that she was, Guin didn’t deserve it. Not to mention that she’d take full advantage of any softening in him to do…something.

He didn’t really hold that against her, since from his point of view, it wasn’t doing anything he wouldn’t do for survival. But he did need her on a mutually cooperative footing, considering how their case was going. “Never mind. But I’m going to assume you’re not favoring Merlin at all now, and if I find out differently, so help me God, I’ll—”

“That’s not something you need to worry about,” she interrupted, back to her normal acid self. “He’s fucked me over in far too many ways.”

“Good.” Which wasn’t exactly the most tactful thing to say, but Lancelot had always preferred clarity of expression over politeness.

Then again, being polite might have introduced another subject of conversation, whereas his laconic statement capped things off so neatly that they were left looking at each other in silence. Lancelot shifted his weight around, which in turn twitched his clothes so his collar pulled away from his skin. It felt sticky up there, he absently noted. Running a finger around the back of his neck revealed that his damned hair gel was melting off.

“It looks better when it’s not slicked down, anyway,” Guin commented. Behind her, the phone abruptly buzzed.

“But then it and the hat don’t get along,” Lancelot shot back, watching her answer the phone. Her expression underwent the most interesting convolutions from indifference to intense engagement to uncertainty—that one took a moment to recognize—and the tone of her voice followed a parallel evolution.

The conversation itself wasn’t stellar stuff: Guin said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and only at the end did she go into a full sentence to say ‘we’ll be there.’ Then she hung up the phone, but with a strange reluctance.

“Well?” If nothing else, this case was introducing completely new sides of Guin to Lancelot. He wasn’t used to seeing her speechless.

Her lips moved, but nothing came out. Then she snorted, giving herself a little sardonic smile, and slanted a cynical look at Lancelot. “That was Arthur, returning my call from when you were talking to Tristan—I figured we should get some more details about this sword, and exactly why so many people would be after it.”

Lancelot’s stomach still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of feeling sorry for Guin, and this new twist had the odd effect of rippling a vaguely nauseous unease through him. It didn’t make sense—just like most of his investigation. “I do have a few things I’d like to talk to him about. German was ranting about the sword before he was flattened, like it was some mystical thing.”

“Good. Because we’re having tea with Arthur this afternoon.” Guin seemed ridiculously amused just by the act of saying that.

“Tea?” While Lancelot had heard of the word before, it hadn’t been in the context of…Jesus Christ, posh afternoon crumpets and lace and God knew what else. “_Tea_?”

Grinning, Guin patted him on the cheek and pushed him back into his office. “Yes, tea. You should probably get a haircut—I’ll find you some decent pomade, or something. Oh, and I should put on pearls. We’re meeting him uptown.”

“Tea. Christ.” For a moment longer, Lancelot’s mind remained on the floor where the suckerpunch inanity of the whole situation had put it. But then it snapped back and his practicality reasserted itself. The meal was going to be on Arthur’s bill, anyway, so if he wanted to buy Lancelot a gourmet…tea…then hell, it was his money. “Right. But that’s…what, three? I’ll come and pick you up at half-past two.”

“And where are you going?” Guin stood up and put her hands on her hips, eying him like he was some kind of urchin. She didn’t play the mother-figure very well; for one, her _figure_ was too damn sexy. Two, she didn’t exude a terribly nurturing air.

Rolling his eyes, Lancelot side-stepped her and walked back out, snagging his coat and hat on the way. “I’m going to do some work. In Whitechapel. Since we have no fucking idea where Ambrose is, and the only way you can miss Merlin is if you’re dead and buried on the other side of the world.”

“Bastard,” muttered from behind him. Something went soaring just over Lancelot’s shoulder and he barely caught it in time: an apple. “I suppose you want me to call up all the hotels and convince the clerks to give up information about their guests.”

Lancelot grabbed the doorframe and swung back in, grinning as widely as he could. “But you do it so _well_,” he purred.

She threw another apple at him.

He ate that one on the way down the stairs—as usual, the goddamned elevator was broken—and the first one while driving down to Dagonet’s place. The man would live nearly outside city lines, but then he needed the room for the dogs. The moment Lancelot stopped, they were swarming up to gambol around the door. All big, all more wolfish than cuddly, but their tongues hung out in idiotic grins and their paws didn’t ever touch the finish on Lancelot’s car. Well-trained.

He gave them the apple cores to bat around, then leaned over the seat and opened the passenger door. “Whitechapel. You feel like coming?”

Dagonet nodded, then turned around and went back into the building. He came out two minutes later with a brutal-looking shotgun that raised even Lancelot’s eyebrows and, after placating his pack with some ear-ruffling, quietly got into the car.

“I just plan on talking, by the way. And if we don’t have to see Merlin, then that’d be like an early Christmas gift,” Lancelot commented as he carefully backed into the street, doing his damnedest not to clip any of the dogs. They got the message and edged back, whining all the way.

The other man nodded again. “I need to be back by lunch to help Bors and Vanora feed the pride.”

“No problem with that. The less time we’re in Whitechapel, the better. Besides, I’ve got a…” Lancelot tried and failed at not curling his lip “…tea-time date.”


	3. Confidentiality

According to the travel agencies, Whitechapel had come a long, long way from its heyday as the grime on the bottom of the Victorian heel. But from where Lancelot was sitting, it still had a while to go before it was anything resembling welcoming—and he didn’t consider himself soft in the least. Since he wasn’t dumb, either, he was secretly reassured by the silent bulk beside him.

Dagonet was a good man. And a tall one, and a strong one, and a dedicated one. Other than those, Lancelot couldn’t come up with any defining characteristics. Though that wasn’t to say that the man didn’t have any; Bors, for one, staunchly insisted that Dag was an outright genius when it came to children, animals or engines, but then, Bors and Dag were family. Some kind of distant cousinhood, about which Lancelot had never bothered to get the details. Anyway, Dag functioned more like a faithful brother.

When Guin felt really bitchy, she hinted that Dag and Bors and Vanora had some kind of bedroom arrangement, but that, Lancelot doubted. Dag didn’t give off the slightest hint of impropriety towards Vanora, and besides, Guin could be damned jealous when she was feeling an itch. But even if it was true…well, he didn’t much care. It wouldn’t be the kinkiest relationship he’d ever seen.

“The object of this trip is to sound out where Merlin’s game happens to be at the moment. That’s all. I don’t want to meet Merlin, and I damned well don’t want him showing up on my doorstep later.” The street before them was pretty busy, so Lancelot decided to forget about the shotgun, just in case it gave off the wrong kind of message to the crowd. He adjusted his pistol so it hugged his side under his arm without making any suspicious bulges in his coat, then swung open the car door.

In the two seconds that Lancelot needed to round the front of the car, Dag had already managed to attract a scrawny orange mewing thing, which was probably stuffed to the gills with fleas. Suppressing his exasperation, Lancelot waved the other man towards the alley before them. He kept in step with Dag, but made certain to keep well away from the cat.

This particular alley was known locally as the Dragon’s Mouth because it was the main thoroughfare between Merlin’s territory proper and the rest of Whitechapel, which was nominally under other gangs. They all paid tribute to the crazy Welsh mystic, so the boundary was really more a sop for their remnants of pride than a real hard-and-fast delineation, but the distinction did have one nice feature: Merlin didn’t cross it unless he was personally taking care of someone outside. Since he was getting on in years, and had raised a hellish pack of insanely-devoted muscle-men, that didn’t happen too often anymore.

Consequently, it was Lancelot’s best bet for getting a good reading on the winds of the magician without actually having to wet his finger and stick it up in the air. Especially if he could find a certain…ah. Lancelot casually sidestepped the street hawkers and ducked into the alley, where he was promptly set upon by heavily-rouged harpies. A couple smiles got them back without him suffering too many catcalls; any more physical manifestations of disappointment, like slaps, were discouraged by the living monolith walking beside him.

He stopped about halfway in beside a rag-tag quilt of festival colors, which was topped off with long lank brown hair, a not unattractive face, and huge black staring eyes. “Vivien.”

“Knight of the land,” she returned, slowly rising from her crouch over a kerchief of random rubbish. Her hands went back to press against the wall, dirty nails curling and scratching at the bricks, and her chin tilted up to show a heavy scar necklace around her neck.

Merlin’s only living ex-lover, Vivien had a reputation for second sight, divination, or whatever one wanted to call it. She definitely had the act down, from the hollowed-out voice to the unblinking, unfocused eyes, but the reason she and Merlin had fallen out was another woman, so Lancelot had to doubt her so-called gift. In his line of thinking, a true psychic would’ve not only seen that coming, but would have seen Merlin’s outraged attempt to strangle her with a belt as well. But then, she’d taken one of Merlin’s eyes, and afterward Merlin had allowed her to live as a crazed vagrant, so in any case, she wasn’t quite normal.

“Stop calling me that. There haven’t been knights in centuries.” Lancelot shook out a cigarette and offered her one. After a second of staring, her hand blurred. The cigarette was in her mouth and her palm was back on the wall before he could even register it. “You bring a white horse here now, it’d be black and brown and dead within the hour.”

“You bring a closed book and want me to open it.” She craned forward so he could light them off the same flame, then drew back in a slow, sinuous manner, turning her head as if to look at him upside-down. “But the story’s coming undone. Bede knew that.”

Acid suddenly rushed up into the back of Lancelot’s mouth, wet and roiling and mixing badly with the gaseous bite of the nicotine. He pressed his lips together and forced himself to swallow. “Bede’s dead. Do me a favor, would you? Just give me a straight answer—is Merlin getting into the antique business again? Say, swords?”

“He didn’t kill me because I told him. I warned him, and he saw I knew, and he couldn’t bring himself to kill the truth.” Vivien produced a checkered smile of black and yellow, which made a lurid contrast with the white of the cigarette paper. She abruptly threw herself straight and slouched against the wall, narrow-eyed and languorous. Her voluminous rag-coat slipped and folded till instead of turning her shapeless, it somehow bloomed a shadow-beauty. “It’s not really the sword, you know. Though men are fools and think so.”

“Maybe, but they’ve got the money and we’re the ones left stuck with the hole,” sneered one girl, overhearing the conversation. Make-up caked on about three years, but her youth was screamingly clear in the inexpert way she clattered up on six-inch heels. “Hey, mister. You asking about Merlin and swords?”

Frankly, Lancelot had been hoping he could just weasel the information he needed out of Vivien, who might have been nuts but who still had ears and free passage in Whitechapel. Asking anyone else risked word getting back to Merlin—hell, just coming down to Whitechapel risked that, but he could come up with a lie for that, whereas he couldn’t for nosing around Excalibur. On the other hand, it seemed like today Vivien was going to be difficult and forget who had found her unconscious on the edges of the district after the strangling. Sometimes Lancelot really regretted listening to Gawain and driving that bloody lump to the nearest hospital.

In the end, he settled for half-turning towards the girl and giving a neutral answer. “Why?”

Lancelot glanced past her at Dag, who nodded and silently moved to block off the rest of the alley and thus formed a semi-private space for them. The girl shot Dag a contemptuous, considering look, then subjected Lancelot to a clumsily assessing one.

With a sigh, Lancelot reached into his pocket and peeled off a bill, which he flapped underhand at her. She reached for it, but he snatched it back. Didn’t give in to her two-year-old pout, either.

“Because Merlin’s been asking about swords,” she reluctantly muttered, once it was clear he wasn’t doing the pre-pay routine. “Maybe he’s opening a museum or something.”

“Maybe. I’m…” a newspaper headline drudged itself up from Lancelot’s memory “…from one. You know that dig nearby? Well, they found a sword there, but someone stole before it could be taken to the museum. I’m just asking around, trying to find it.” He ducked his head and half-hid his most charming embarrassed grin. “See, it doesn’t look too good if we can’t keep track of things. We just want to get that sword back before anyone finds out we lost it.”

Forty-year-old iron spinsters had fallen for that look with little effort on Lancelot’s part. The girl softened like butter on a hot radiator. “Oh. Well, Merlin doesn’t have it…not yet, I don’t think. But he’s looking for this German bastard who’s supposed to have it. A…A…starts with an…”

“Ambrose?” Blank look in response. “Aurelian?”

“Aurelian.” She gave an emphatic nod. “But no one’s ever heard of him. Or has a clue about where he is.”

Considering the usual level of cooperation he encountered, Lancelot figured she deserved a bit more. He got out another bill and handed both over, which she quickly took and folded away somewhere in her skimpy clothing. Then she tottered off, throwing him one last look over her shoulder. It was a sad attempt at seduction that pinched his gut. Life, however, had long since hardened that part of his body, so Lancelot went back to smoking and glowering at Vivien without a second’s thought.

“You might pull it off.” And now the woman was being lucid. It figured. When it came to the female sex, Lancelot seemed to be perpetually on the out. “You haven’t been around here in ages, and Merlin’s been doing some purging. No one here except me knows you for what you are.”

“Thanks, Vivien. Really.” Thoroughly disgusted with the rewards of the good Samaritan, Lancelot spun on his heel and started to walk out.

Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was sheer perversity. But he paused for one last question. “So what am I?”

“Worth waiting for.” Then she laughed, loud and mocking, and blew a long stream of stinging smoke into his surprise. “Oh, not by me. I like mine big-breasted and wicked. Darling Morgan, who fell in the river and never rose again…damn him. _Damn_ him.”

When Vivien’s eyes went from smudged to sharp, it was time to go. Lancelot put out his smoke on the wall and dropped the butt in the gutter, then headed for the alley’s entrance.

* * *

“That went well,” Lancelot commented, spinning the wheel. Once they’d gotten back in the car, Dag had remembered he’d wanted to pick up a package from Galahad. A glance at the clock had shown that Lancelot had a little time to burn, so he had obligingly headed that way. There was a decent sandwich shop near Galahad’s place that might do for lunch.

Dag murmured to the bundled-up coat in his arms, then turned to Lancelot. While he nearly always looked serious, his expression had degrees of sobriety, and currently, it was shaded to concern. “It didn’t feel right.”

“Too well,” Lancelot agreed. He slouched in the seat and drummed his fingers on the dash, thinking. “Merlin’s a careful man. And if his men took out German, then they saw me.”

And when they rounded that last corner, they saw Merlin. Or rather, they saw Merlin’s handiwork tumbling out of the door of the auction house, followed by an enraged Galahad. Lancelot slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop just before he hit the fleeing man, who had the telltale blue tattoo on his left cheek and who was carrying something that smelled a hell of a lot like gasoline. That got thrown against the windshield—a bunch of soaked rags—and the man spun around so fast he almost fell over into Galahad’s hands. But at the last moment, the man regained his balance and dodged, running off toward a nearby bridge.

It didn’t take much arithmetic to add up to a bad answer, so Lancelot didn’t hesitate in jumping out and going after the other man. He easily caught up and grabbed the bastard’s elbow, then dug in his heels in an attempt to whirl the man backwards towards the others. It would have worked, except silver flashed and a red slash burned its way across the back of Lancelot’s hand. Cursing, he let go and yanked out his gun. “Fuck! Goddamn it, stop or I’ll—”

With a determined look, the other man stopped where he was and ripped his knife across his throat. He fell against the side of the bridge, then heaved himself over with a final effort. Lancelot got to the railing just in time to see the splash.

They really were fanatics. Lancelot swore some more and wished to God that people would stop dying on him before he could talk to them.

“The fucking son of a bitch,” Galahad panted, coming up beside Lancelot. The other man had a sizable bruise on his jaw, which he couldn’t seem to stop rubbing. “Great. Not only does he try to burn my place down, but now I’ve got to deal with the fucking police, too.”

“Suicide. Weird one, but they won’t be too hard on you.” A cursory inspection proved that the cut on Lancelot’s hand wasn’t disabling, but it was going to need stitches. Great. So much for lunch—whatever they were having with tea had better be something substantial, because between the frustration and the hunger pangs, Lancelot was rapidly losing the ability to be rational. “Don’t suppose he gave you a reason?”

Galahad rolled his eyes and spat over the side. “Yeah. A lousy one. Fucking Merlin thinks ruling one part of London gives him say-so over the whole black market—well, fuck him.”

His tone was understandably bitter, but the degree of sparking heat in it was a little worrying. “Try not to be an idiot,” Lancelot warned, digging out a handkerchief. He wrapped up his hand as best he could, then remembered something and looked behind him. “Where’s Dag?”

“Hmm? Oh, there—what the hell? That’s Gawain’s car he’s taking…” Frowning, Galahad pointed to at the curb. “Where is he going?”

“He didn’t even pick up his package…oh, hell. He’s worried about Bors and cubs, probably. Our trip into Whitechapel wasn’t too reassuring.” Lancelot watched the red soak through the handkerchief and gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to curse some more. As satisfying as it would be, he had more important things to do. Like calling Guin to see if they could get to Ambrose before Merlin did, and condensing the confusion incinerating his insides into some concrete questions for Arthur.

“Whitechapel?” The other man stopped watching Dag go off and looked at Lancelot in a way that let him know Galahad wasn’t going to stop nagging till he got an answer.

Bulldog. In his way, Galahad was as bad as Guin when it came to information. Neither of them were happy with what they had, and they always wanted to know more, regardless of what it was about. Whereas Lancelot was curious—it came with the profession—but generally had a good sense of when knowing more would tip the odds against him. “Look, we just came from the Dragon’s Mouth. I wanted to know if Merlin was really interested in that sword, and why. Went to see Vivien, but she was being moody and so I had to talk to this girl instead. And your little joke apparently is real—he wants that thing. Badly.”

“Fucking grand. And I had a hard enough time convincing Gawain to beat it this morning,” Galahad snorted, pivoting and walking back toward the auction house. He threw Lancelot the same kind of accusing look all of Lancelot’s ex-girlfriends had used to wind up their relationship—with the exception of Guin, but they weren’t really dating in the first place. More like occasionally getting fed up to the point of fucking.

“This is not my fault,” Lancelot muttered, walking back with the other man. Since he needed to borrow Galahad’s phone, he kept the sarcasm as low as he could manage. But really, it wasn’t as if Galahad didn’t have his own messes on the side. None of them were innocents, and they all had been around too long to plead ignorance of the game. “Look, help me track down Ambrose and that damn sword, and then it’ll all be over.”

Shaking his head, Galahad swung himself over the broken glass and beer on the doorstep and carefully goosestepped his way inside. “Over? Bullshit. You piss off Merlin, it’s not over till someone’s dead.”

“Fine. It’s _not_ over.” Last night was still a low raw grind on Lancelot’s nerves, and so far, the day wasn’t easing up on that any. He whacked his hand to get Galahad’s attention, then pointedly went to the phone and started dialing. “But you know something, Galahad? Pissing off Merlin doesn’t scare me. It just pisses _me_ off.”

For a moment, there was only the chime in Lancelot’s ear and the soft cursing of Galahad as he dug out a mop from somewhere. Then Galahad paused, staring at the overturned chairs and spilled alcohol; it looked like it’d been a hell of a fight. “I’ve been wanting to see that bastard go down for ages. Pretty much everyone has. But…”

“But what? But can’t it be someone else? Well, I’m in no hurry, frankly. I’ve got a living to make, bills to pay.” The phone clicked in Lancelot’s ear, signaling that someone had picked up, but all he could hear after that was muffled conversation. One of the voices sounded like Guin, and after a bit of straining, he decided the other was Gawain. “If someone wants to take a shot at him, they’re free to. But if they don’t, and the son of a bitch comes at me, then I’d better shoot back, shouldn’t I?”

Slap, slap, slap. Galahad mopped like he’d been doing it his whole life. And come to think of it, Lancelot couldn’t remember seeing any regular employees around the place. Gawain came round everyday, but obviously, Gawain didn’t do it as a job. So either Galahad was incredibly cheap, or his prickliness wasn’t out of pure spite.

*Can you hang on a moment? Thanks,* Guin hurriedly said, then returned to chatting up Gawain. The growl in Lancelot’s throat inched up another fraction.

With a long, gusting sigh, Galahad stopped again and propped up his chin and hands on the top of the mop handle. He chewed on his lip, actually producing a credibly meditative expression as he stared at a fresh black scorch mark in the corner. “I didn’t say you shouldn’t.”

“And I didn’t ever make you drink all those beers I bought you, but you did, and you owe those. Plus some other things.” That burn on the floorboards resembled the taste in Lancelot’s mouth, charred and pitted and smudged. It wouldn’t go away no matter how much he swallowed, and in fact, it was starting to spread upward into his brain, smearing it dark and tired. “Christ, Galahad. I’m sorry this bounced in your door, but it’s not like I did it on purpose. And it’s not like you couldn’t see this kind of shit coming before you decided to help me.”

“Are you trying to guilt me, or blame me?” The other man turned around and narrowed his eyes in cynical amusement. Surprisingly enough, his mood seemed to be on the upswing; Galahad normally kept grudges for weeks. “Stop talking before you embarrass yourself, Lancelot. I get it.” His face shadowed a little in reluctant comprehension. “Anyway, I came in earlier than usual and surprised that shit. Merlin wasn’t trying to kill me, only to warn me—and you, I guess—off.”

That tidbit of information riled Lancelot some because damned if he couldn’t have used that a few moments sooner, instead of…actually worrying over the fluff-headed dick…but it relieved him even more. For the moment, he wasn’t the center of Merlin’s attention. Which, incidentally, implied that Merlin didn’t have any more clue than him about where Ambrose currently was.

*I apologize for the wait,* Guin breathlessly said, crackling back into Lancelot’s ear. *Dulac, private investigator. May I help you?*

“Yeah. For a start, you could stop fobbing me off,” Lancelot snapped. His peripheral vision caught Galahad snickering before the other man swashed the mop one last time across the spill. A faint grin played over Lancelot’s own face for the instant before Guin’s sharp retort took him back into business as usual.

* * *

He left Galahad finally getting round to phoning the police about the body in the river and did a quick detour into a doctor’s office before going to pick up Guin. Lancelot parked in front of the building and leaned back in the seat, staring at his nice taped-up hand and trying to pretend the bandages weren’t already itching like hell.

“On time twice in one day. Amazing.” The passenger door opened and Guin slipped in, lightly scented with musky perfume and gleaming like a new car. Her hair was perfectly molded into waves that begged to be stroked, her neck was draped in pearls, and her clothes were an elegant showcase of an excellent figure.

She was trying far too hard. In the face of her patent, if well-tempered, excitement, most people wouldn’t have had the heart. Of course, Lancelot was made of sterner stuff. “All tricked out, aren’t we.”

“Bastard—oh. What did you do, duck into a couple bare-knuckle matches along the way?” Guin pulled the door shut and stretched over to run a finger over the edge of Lancelot’s hand-wrap.

He tugged his hand away and started the car, feeling a laugh well up in his chest. Even though Guin had only needed two years to become better than most old hands at the detective business, she still had the rare moment where she betrayed some naïveté. They’d caught each other up on their respective investigations over the phone—like him, she had nothing meaty so far—and she couldn’t fill in that blank? “Actually, that was courtesy of Merlin’s man.”

Apparently, just mentioning that name would quench any kind of light in Guin. At first, that realization afforded Lancelot no small amusement, but as he drove on and she remained quiet and stiff beside him, he started to get a bit uneasy. As damnable as it could be sometimes, Guin’s toughness was also one of her most attractive—to the sensible man—qualities. Not to mention an integral part of her character. Seeing her vulnerable like this should have been an invitation to apply merciless pressure, yet Lancelot found himself loathe to do so, due to that reason. They teased and squabbled, but they didn’t try to break each other. That was what everyone else did, but not them—or at least, that was what it felt like to Lancelot.

In the end, the silence needled too deep under his fingernails, which he dug into the steering wheel. “Guin?”

“What?” She was staring out the window, and when he spoke, she didn’t turn to look at him. Just rolled out that one word in the flattest tone possible.

Originally, Lancelot had meant to ask her again about what Merlin had done to her, but at the last moment, he changed his mind. Spur of the moment generosity, maybe. Or he was still a bit ragged at the edges from Bede’s death, and knew too well what her state of mind probably was. “What’d the coroner’s reports say?”

“Hmm?” That clearly hadn’t been the question she’d been expecting, but her relief flashed loud a second before her composure reasserted itself. “Oh. Gawain had just come by to drop off those when you called, and I didn’t get a chance to look at them. When I told him about Galahad, he swore like a longshoreman and started grilling me on everything. He didn’t leave till about a minute before you pulled up.”

“The man worries far too much,” Lancelot chuckled, easing his car through the crowded road. They were in the posh pretty district now, and he couldn’t help but stare a few times at the unfamiliar surroundings. The rich needed dirt dug up just as much as the rest of the world, so it wasn’t as if Lancelot was coming in as a yokel, but it was still different enough from his usual routine for him to look long. And memorize as a reflex, on the off-hand that something went badly up here.

That ghost of gaunt pain flitted over Guin’s face again. She moved restlessly in her seat, then got out a smoke. Amusingly enough, she was now using a long ivory holder. “He might not be. We have to get to Ambrose and settle that fast, because we’ll need all we’ve got to handle Merlin afterward. He’s going to be very, very disappointed.”

“Good to hear that he’s _going_ to be.” A spot before them suddenly opened it and Lancelot sent the car leaping in, then gracefully swung it around to the curb in front of the Ritz. If nothing else, he could drive with style.

The varlet opening the door, Lancelot could handle. But it took him a moment too long to realize the man’s upturned palm was for the car keys, and then it was Guin’s turn to smirk at him. He bit down on his lip to fight down the creeping flush and offered his arm, making certain to keep his head up and his gaze meeting everyone else’s head-on. They might notice every little misstep he made, but he was the one who hung out their filthy laundry for the newsprint eyes to transcribe.

Naturally, Guin took to the ostentatious glitter and gilt like she’d been born to it—and for all Lancelot knew, maybe she had been. She definitely lent him some high glamour that, he was irritated to find, he seemed to need. The fight earlier hadn’t left any obvious marks on his clothes, which were of decent-enough quality and cut, but he could feel the haughty sniff at his bandaged hand and his slightly-unruly hair. It made him want to knock the oiled maître’d to the ground and break a few joints, just to see whether they were mechanical or human.

“Relax,” Guin murmured, leaning in the exact fraction necessary to give all watchers the impression they were a lovely young couple.

As they followed the waiter to their table, Lancelot resisted the urge to tromp on the snooty bastard’s heels. “It’s the accent. Sounds like someone yanked up their noses an extra inch, which makes me want to pull it back down where it belongs.”

She dragged on her cigarette in a way that expressed extreme annoyance. “You’re hopeless.”

“But I know who I am and where I stand,” he hissed out of the side of his mouth. “Unlike some.”

“What do you want? A declaration that I’ll hold down Merlin for you while you cut his throat? I said on the phone that I’d see this through with you. And I will. I’ll see this done.” Her jaw hardened, which on any other woman would have been unattractively masculine. But on Guin, it only heightened the tangible air of dangerous determination around her. She looked like she was about to stab her high heels over the entire restaurant.

From the looks she was getting, most of the swanks frequenting the Ritz were just dying for someone to crack the whip over them. It really was funny how everyone always wanted the opposite of what they already had: the weak wanted to be strong, and the strong got so tired they wanted to be weak once in a while. Only no one was ever willing to pay the full cost to get what they wanted, so everyone stayed unhappy. Hell of a way to balance the world.

“I just want to know you’re not going to run from the fight. And that you’ll be around when the ruins stop smoking. That’s all.” Lancelot scanned the wide galleries they were passing through, absently observing what constituted the latest trends in clothes, meals, table-partners. It seemed that redheads were having a bit of a resurgence.

“You sound like you’re actually fond of me. Scared of losing the only girl that’ll put up with you?” Guin whispered, voice rich with mocking humor. She tightened her grip on his arm and stepped a little closer so he could smell the tingling mix of her perfume and the cigarette smoke.

It appeared they were heading for one of the window-side seats, which didn’t impress Lancelot too much. The sky had started filling with clouds around the time he’d left Galahad, and even uptown, bad weather was bad weather. “Don’t overstretch yourself, Guin. Getting snapped back hurts.”

But he’d spoken a bit too fast. Surprisingly enough, Guin didn’t pounce on that prime bit, but instead, merely smiled to herself in a manner that was slightly less cutting than usual. Then she tugged at him. “Come on, Lancelot. He’s already paid us; this isn’t an interview for a job.”

“What?” Startled, he tore his eyes away from the people passing outside and started to turn towards her. Halfway there, he got stuck.

“You keep trying to slow down…” Guin noticed his distraction and followed the direction of his gaze.

Though it was overcast outdoors, inside the lighting was bright and sparkling. It seemed good light could make all the difference in the world, because Arthur looked whole. Like a man instead of a hollow shape, as he’d seemed in Lancelot’s office. He was seated and staring blankly at the menu, one hand holding it up while the other one fidgeted with the end of his tie.

“Anxious.” Lancelot could feel his eyebrows wanting to go up. When he took his next step, he suddenly could understand what Guin had been talking about. For some reason, he was acting as if he was moving through molasses.

That irked him, for obvious reasons. So he covered the rest of the ground in reasonable time and freed his arm from Guin just as Arthur was standing up. His hat momentarily confused him, but then he realized he could just set it on the table if he didn’t want to crumple it by shoving it under an arm. “Arthur. Thanks for agreeing to see us.”

“You’re very welcome…Mr. Dulac.” The other man put out a hand to meet Lancelot’s midway, but his eyes stayed on Lancelot’s face. In contrast to their first meeting, Arthur’s expression was tightly closed beneath its veneer of polite welcome—though the faint movements at the corners of his lips and his eyes said that was an extremely unnatural pose for him to take. He murmured some deprecating inanity, then smoothly gave Guin the same kind of greeting; interestingly, he didn’t bat an eye when Lancelot reintroduced her as his partner. Backstage to their little act, the waiter was busily pulling out chairs for Lancelot and Guin.

Once they were seated and had ordered—Guin Darjeeling, Lancelot the same because the waiter glowered at him like he had to pick one, and Arthur Earl Grey—Arthur opened up with the first real substantial bit of conversation. “I suppose the day afterward is too early to ask if you’ve any results yet, but…”

Lancelot slid a glance at Guin, but she gave him an infinitesimal shrug and moved back to make way for the food that was now arriving. Which apparently handed him the reins of this meeting. “Actually, we’ve already done some preliminary work, and some…interesting complications have come up. That’s why we asked for this meeting.”

Arthur nodded and straightened in his seat, quietly waiting for Lancelot to make the next move. Like Tristan, he didn’t blink often, but unlike Tristan, Arthur’s eyes didn’t seem to want to focus on a specific spot. Instead, they flicked about Lancelot’s face, with the occasional glance at Guin. After a moment of trying to ignore it, Lancelot decided it made him more uncomfortable than Tristan’s steady stare did. At least with Tristan, he could always pretend the other man was attempting to intimidate him—most likely the truth—but this was more like Arthur was searching Lancelot’s face for something.

Thankfully, lighting a cigarette gave Lancelot an excuse to avoid that strange scrutiny. He reflexively offered one to Arthur and somehow wasn’t surprised when he was refused, though Arthur took his time about resettling himself in his chair. “Two dealers in stolen antiques are dead. It appears that Ambrose was responsible for one of them. Odd behavior, that. Thieves generally don’t kill the men who can unload their goods for them, seeing as the reason they go to such dealers is because it’s hard to sell things on the black market if you don’t have one.”

“I see.” Very calmly, Arthur continued to look at Lancelot while he transferred some ridiculously tiny sandwiches from the gleaming display towers in the middle of the table to his plate. Then he gestured at the tidbits and at the teapots. “Help yourself, please. The tea should be done steeping by now.”

“Er…right.” Lancelot reached for the pot of Darjeeling, then suffered a sharp kick to his ankle. He glared at Guin, who glared back before looking pointedly at her cup.

As if she didn’t bitch him out for punching aggressive drunks before she could. But it was a fancy hotel and Arthur was watching them with a distantly amused look, so Lancelot bit down on his curse and poured her damn tea. Then he poured his own…and froze, not quite sure whether Arthur was supposed to pour his own. The man did have a separate pot.

In the end, Lancelot finessed the issue by taking the cigarette from his mouth and blowing the smoke away from them. Still looking as if he had some private joke turning over in his head, Arthur poured his own cup and delicately started eating the sandwiches. If he noticed that Lancelot was watching how he did so rather closely, he was gracious enough to not mention it. Whereas Guin stepped on Lancelot’s toe, the bitch. “So it doesn’t look like Ambrose’s motive is to sell the sword,” Lancelot added, struggling to control his temper. “He went, got an assessment, and then he killed the assessor.”

“Which leads to two questions,” Guin put in. She seemed to know exactly what to eat with what, damn her. “One: why would Ambrose doubt the sword’s identity enough to need an independent assessment? Two: if he doesn’t want to make money off the sword, then what is he planning to do with it?”

When Arthur looked at Guin, he gave her the same sort of treatment with the eyes as he had Lancelot. The only difference as far as Lancelot could see was that Arthur’s expression seemed to grow faintly pleased, like he was proud of her. But he still gave off an air of sadness, edginess and something else that Lancelot couldn’t quite identify.

“I did mention that Ambrose and I had a falling-out. Aside from any monetary value, he knows that sword means a good deal to me—” Arthur began.

Lancelot plucked a few starved-looking sandwiches from the platters and ate them as slowly as he could, given that he’d had to skip lunch for the doctor’s visit. “Have you had any word from him?”

Arthur blinked. “No…not since I found out that Excalibur was missing.”

“I’m asking because I’ve been around enough to know you can learn a lot about men from how they kill other people. The way Ambrose killed—” swallow back the name with a mouthful of watercress and bread “—that one dealer, I’d say he had one hell of a temper.” A beat later, the expected affirmation from the other man came, and Lancelot went on. “Men with hot tempers aren’t the kind for cold revenge. If this was only about that, he would’ve been calling you nonstop, or leaving some kind of message to taunt you. Has he?”

Before he answered, Arthur took a deep breath and a deep draft of tea. Stalling, obviously. He glanced past Lancelot’s shoulder at Guin, but his face told Lancelot that Guin wasn’t giving Arthur any hope of help. Good thing her amorous side didn’t have the tendency to soften her up, like it did in most women.

“No, he hasn’t.” The other man casually flicked his eyes about their surroundings, checking the relative distances of the other people in the room like a professional. It made for one hell of a contrast with his previous uncertain, faltering behavior; Lancelot suddenly recalled a detail from the first meeting and dropped his gaze to Arthur’s hands, which were more callused than he remembered. And now he could see little scars and discolored spots, like the man did hard labor in his spare time.

Arthur bent forward and folded his hands on the table, speaking in a very low voice. “I failed to mention this before because I hoped that quick cash was Ambrose’s motive. My family—I have extensive property, some of which have land claims dating back to before medieval times. Consequently, the deeds contain some rather archaic wording—they bestow ownership on the bearer of the sword that can be definitively proven to be Excalibur.”

“You could challenge it in court,” Guin said, catching on a bare second before Lancelot did.

“I could. My solicitors tell me that my claim would probably be upheld. But the cases would be long and expensive, and in the meantime…a few of these properties are ones my family has leased or lent to the government for certain purposes that couldn’t be conducted on government land. Due to the chances of public exposure.” Both regret and irritation briefly surfaced in Arthur’s eyes; he didn’t seem to be all that pleased with the position in which his ancestors had put him. Well, Lancelot couldn’t blame him. In these days and times, even the highest-placed noble could be made to bow to government and press, if enough pressure of scandal were applied. And Arthur probably wasn’t used to feeling that kind of threat breathing on the back of his neck.

Lancelot started to slouch back, caught himself and unhappily did his mental reordering of the case details while the crick in his spine slowly spread to his shoulders. He sucked the last quarter of his cigarette to ash before stubbing it out next to Guin’s in the crystal tray. “And why did he have the assessment done?”

The other man shrugged and sipped more of his tea. “I have a large sword collection. Ambrose isn’t an expert; perhaps he thought I might have replaced the real one with a fake for display purposes.”

Once again, someone competent and intimidating was peeking out from under the façade. Studying that man was, paradoxically, like trying to hold still in order to lure a shy bird into coming down from a tree, but Lancelot did his best.

Though Arthur’s suit was of fine heavy stuff, when he shifted parts of it would pull tight enough to show irregular ridges over his shoulder and chest. If they were scars, then that must have been one hell of a fight. And gracefulness aside, he moved like someone that was often in that kind of situation. He’d taken the seat that had the best view of the room and the street outside, which put his back to the wall.

“I believe you mentioned a woman Ambrose killed,” Guin commented. She reached back Lancelot for a scone and started dolloping cream and jam on top of it.

After a moment, Lancelot figured his stomach’s demands superseded the potential for messy embarrassment and took one himself. If nothing else, he did have to say that the Ritz’s kitchen knew what it was doing with food.

“I did. She was a prostitute Ambrose took a fancy to. He believed he was in love with her for a while, but my uncle thought otherwise. From what I hear—I was out of the country when this happened—my uncle cut off Ambrose’s allowance in an attempt to convince him to drop her.” Arthur spoke in a neutral tone, which generally seemed to indicate his silent disapproval with the decisions he was relating. Taken with the other details, it added up to quite the unconventional aristocrat. “Eventually, he did. A year later, they somehow ran into each other again, and Ambrose became enraged enough to kill her.”

“Do you know what it was that specifically angered him that much?” As Guin questioned Arthur, she gradually inclined herself more and more forward, till her breast was brushing against Lancelot’s arm. Every so often, her hand would come up to adjust her pearls and flutter along her throat.

Rolling his eyes just wouldn’t have been a sufficient expression of his disgust, so Lancelot refrained from doing that and bit a little harder into his scone. Maybe Arthur was rich, young, and handsome, but that only made it even more obvious that he had to have a whole basketful of dirty laundry in his closet. And something about the way he looked at them was…not precisely shifty, since he was too much of a natural gentleman, but it was certainly disturbing Lancelot on a level that made him want to go for a long, fast, hard ride. That varlet had better be quick about bringing the car round.

“Not really. The few times I saw Ambrose afterward, we…weren’t civil enough to discuss the matter.” A trace of sardonic humor crinkled the skin around Arthur’s eyes. “I assume she was blackmailing him for something.”

“Did she have a name?” Guin pressed, sharpening her voice.

That made Lancelot glance back at her, wondering where the hell she was taking this conversational tangent. They weren’t investigating Ambrose’s past misdeeds, but his current ones.

Whatever tingle of intuition she was going on, it apparently was a good one. Arthur flinched—barely noticeable, except for the fact that he was still holding his tea and so the liquid rippled to almost wash over the rim. “Dufay. Elaine…Dufay, I think. My uncle never went into London, but he kept a house about twenty miles out of town. I think someone brought Elaine to a neighbor’s house party, and that was where Ambrose met her.”

“But he also never went into London proper, correct?” Lancelot had an inkling of where Guin might be heading, and he wanted a confirmation before the conversation completely excluded him.

Nodding short and curt, Arthur made it nonverbally clear he didn’t want to pursue this line of conversation any further. Since he’d given up enough to work with, they might as well drop it, Lancelot decided. He popped the last piece of his scone into his mouth and sat back, mildly surprised to find he’d unconsciously eaten quite the swath through the offerings.

“You enjoyed the tea, I take it,” Arthur murmured, draining the rest of his cup. His gaze drifted over the rim and eventually landed on Lancelot’s bandaged hand. “What happened?”

“Minor disagreement with some boiling water,” Lancelot lied. While the other man’s eyes didn’t buy it, Arthur didn’t challenge it, either.

What the other man did do was suddenly turn his gaze from hesitant to penetrating. “Who killed the other dealer?”

And Lancelot had forgotten he’d mentioned that. Damn. He didn’t really want to fill in Arthur about Merlin, since the man might decide Lancelot was stirring up too much attention and take his money elsewhere. On the other hand, if Arthur had managed to remember that lack of detail through the entire conversation, he wasn’t the kind of man who would let himself be sent off with a comforting lie.

Guin didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded at Lancelot when he checked with her. With an internal sigh, Lancelot folded his hands on the table and laid out that part of the cards. “I assume you’ve heard of Merlin. He’s taken an interest in your sword, but as far as I can tell, we’re still ahead of him. That’s why we need everything you know about Ambrose, or where he might be in London. So we can find him first.”

“Merlin.” High or low, the usual reaction to that name was some degree of fear—even Guin betrayed a hint of terror beneath all her hatred. Arthur, however, spat the name like he wanted to stomp on it. For some reason, that wasn’t a reaction he had wanted Lancelot to know about, because he immediately shot a wary glance at Lancelot and snapped down the shutters over his eyes. “I see. I…there might have been a child. Between Ambrose and Elaine. They’re only rumors, but…she seems to have been very strong-willed in her own right. A kind of modern-day Medea.”

“Thank you very much,” Guin said, pushing her chair back and looking imperiously at Lancelot.

That last little bit of information may have clicked together the puzzle in her head, but it hadn’t yet for Lancelot. He glowered at her, trying to bring her back to the table, but she didn’t budge. In the end, he got up and got his hat so they wouldn’t cause a scene. Guin’s specialty, goddamn her.

Arthur also stood, expression suddenly…bereft? At any rate, he seemed on the verge of asking them to stay all through the short farewells.

“He’s watching us, isn’t he?” Lancelot muttered as he escorted Guin toward the door.

“Shut up and don’t look back.” Her head was up, her back was straight, and she was transparently knotted over inside. “We’ve got work to do.”

* * *

Work turned out to be more record-pulling at a few slum hospitals, looking for an Elaine Dufay or an Ambrose Aurelian. Lancelot put up with it till they’d located a birth certificate that did indeed bear those two names for the parents, and then he backed Guin into a dusty, isolated corner of the filing room. “Guin. Why the hell are we wasting time with these? I want to look at those coroner’s reports.”

“You were at both murder scenes; I’d think you would’ve seen everything first-hand,” she shot back. But when he made it obvious that he wasn’t going to budge, no matter how much she beat on his shoulders, she huffed and gave it up. “Doesn’t Medea mean anything to you?”

Lancelot let his expression do the talking.

Guin rolled her eyes and looked brightly condescending. “It’s a myth. She was an ancient queen whose king cheated on her. When she found out, she killed her sons and ran off.”

“And Arthur called Dufay that…okay, apparently there was a kid, and she killed him. So?” It wasn’t a nice story, but then, Lancelot hadn’t been listening to nice bedtime fairytales for a long, long time. He’d heard and seen people doing far worse.

“So that’s why Ambrose killed her. Men don’t give a damn about their women, but they care a hell of a lot for their sons.” Lip curling, Guin held up a yellowed sheet of paper. “She dumped the body on the doorstep of the hospital, just to make sure someone would tell Ambrose. According to this, representatives of the Pendragons collected it. They must have a family plot in the city; I can’t believe they’d go to the trouble of carting it to one of their big country ones.”

Whistling low beneath his breath, Lancelot took the sheet and scanned its lines of cramped handwriting till he found the telltale name. He had to say that he was impressed, considering he wouldn’t have connected the dots like that. “Funny family. They’ll kick out Ambrose, but give the kid a gravestone. It’s not a bad part of town, either.”

She stared at him. “You…know where he is?”

“I know where he would be. Highgate. There was a big flap about three years ago…some woman collapsed in front of the Pendragon mausoleum and said she had a vision of the king returning. It was in the tabloids for ages and ages, though I don’t think it ever made the regular papers.” Lancelot handed the paper back to Guin and stuffed his hands in his pockets, already feeling the cold night wind blasting his back. He gave her a resigned look. “I suppose I get to check out the graveyard, ask around and see if Ambrose visits his kid.”

Guin indulgently patted his cheek—she could, since she wasn’t going to be spending the night staking out a freezing cemetery. When they emerged from the hospital, Lancelot could already feel the last flare of summer dying, and winter sinking its claws into autumn’s back.

“I’ll go over those reports and start checking places within walking distance of Highgate,” she told him on the way back to the office. “Maybe we’ve been looking too low. He probably has enough money still to afford a fancy hotel.”

“Well, enjoy yourself,” Lancelot muttered, slouching down behind the wheel. Yet another night of no sleep…nails were tapping on the window. Frowning, he rolled it down for Guin.

She stuck in a cloth-wrapped bundle, which smelled of scones. Come to think of it, the cloth looked pretty familiar, too. “I lifted it from that last table we passed on the way out.” Smug as a cat in cream, Guin was. “If you’re an idiot and forget to get dinner, you’ve got that at least.”

“Thanks.” For a moment, Lancelot was tempted to spoil everything and ask what she was up to now, to be trying to soften him up ahead of time. But then he remembered the shit he had to get done and figured he could just as well tackle her in the morning. Guin always took her time setting up a side-game, so it wasn’t as if he needed to hurry with that.

* * *

Highgate was currently closed for some kind of deal the next day, but Lancelot forced himself to discuss cricket for a mind-numbingly long time with the groundskeeper who came to tell him off. The end result was that he got to go in to “see his dear grandda’s grave before he had to fly to America for years and years,” but damned if it almost wasn’t worth the trouble. Next time, he might just find a secluded stretch of fence and climb over.

The Pendragon vault was a massive plain one in a corner far off the popular paths. It had somehow remained untouched by the fashionable waves of Egyptian, Classical and Gothic styles that had sown a plentiful crop throughout the rest of the graveyard. Instead, the vault was rather monolithic, bringing to mind vast oak forests and menacingly obscure stone rings. If Lancelot strained his hearing, he could almost hear drums.

Or he was just being a superstitious jackass who’d forgotten his umbrella. Swearing at the sky, Lancelot flipped up the lapels of his coat and ducked against the side of the vault. It had eaves that were just wide enough to shelter Lancelot from the rain, and winglike projections off the entrance’s sides that made a perfect observation spot. From behind them, he could see the approach to the tomb, but people coming down the path couldn’t see him.

According to the groundskeeper, a big bluff blond man with a foreign accent came by every evening between seven and eight. Since it was currently a quarter till seven by Lancelot’s watch, he figured he might as well hang around.

The scones were nothing more than crumbs on the ground when he heard soft, rhythmic splashing coming near. He hurriedly stuffed the Ritz’s napkin into his pocket and slid out his gun, which for the time being he kept pressed against his hip. Then he slowly twisted to peer out from behind the stone.

It was Ambrose, all right. He’d grown the beard Arthur had mentioned, but a few inches of spiky yellow wasn’t enough to disguise the face. The man was as tall and broad as Lancelot had expected, but he was much gaunter than he’d appeared in the photo; life in the dark didn’t seem to agree with him. A long, oilskin-wrapped bundle protruded from under his arm, and a brown sack dangled from his other hand.

Once he’d reached the vault, he detoured left and went around the other side of it, which momentarily confused Lancelot. But then it made sense: the Pendragons may have taken care of the kid’s burial in order to keep things quiet and under their control, but they weren’t going to put the poor boy in with the rest of their esteemed corpses. There probably was a separate grave, and when Lancelot cautiously followed Ambrose, a little gray marker half-hidden by a rosebush confirmed his suspicions. The other man stopped before it and knelt down, laying the long bundle to one side. From the bag he produced two candles and what looked like a bunch of dried herbs, like the useless shit the Whitechapel layabouts sold each other under the pretense that it’d magically resolve all their problems from impotency to murder.

The wind was blowing the rain to one side, towards Lancelot. So Ambrose propped up the candles against the tombstone and then cupped his hand over them to light them. That way, the marker blocked enough of the water coming down to keep them burning. Then the other man picked up the long package and stood, carefully unwrapping it to show flashing sharp steel.

Something blew into Lancelot’s eye. He barely stopped himself from cursing and briefly slumped against the vault’s wall, rubbing out the damned thing. Made himself take a few deep breaths, too, since apparently he hadn’t been doing that enough to keep from feeling lightheaded.

By the time Lancelot looked up again, Ambrose had what had to be Excalibur raised above his head, pointing at the sky like he was trying to become a human lightning rod. The man was shouting something in a deep low growl, but Lancelot couldn’t even make out if it was English or not, due to the sudden rise in the wind. It was whipping around everything, slashing the rain into his face and rattling the tree branches nearby, and then thunder cracked it apart. White streaks arced through the sky while Ambrose abruptly unleashed the most unearthly scream.

“Christ,” Lancelot hissed to himself, pressing into the vault. The man was insane.

And after a moment, the man was clearly disappointed when nothing happened. He glared down at the sword he held and swore in distinctly English words, mixed in with something Lancelot presumed was German.

“Ambrose?” Arthur’s voice?

Lancelot whipped his head around to see that yes, Arthur was coming up the path, then turned back just in time to meet Ambrose’s gaze. He swore and lifted his pistol. “Put down the sword.”

Ambrose did no such thing, and Lancelot hadn’t expected him to. On the other hand, the other man didn’t look scared or even startled, which was worrying. Even worse, Arthur didn’t seem to have noticed Lancelot and was still walking towards Ambrose.

“Ambrose! What are you…oh, God, don’t tell me.” The man certainly had undergone a striking transformation from the retiring, wary, faintly tragic figure Lancelot had had tea with mere hours ago. Now, chin up and eyes hard, Arthur exuded a palpable air of command…though he still had that lingering undertone of regret. “Ambrose. It doesn’t work. I told you.”

“But it has to,” the other man snarled, voice graveled with the roughness of extreme disappointment. He kept Excalibur half-raised in one hand—that sword had to be damned heavy, but his arm wasn’t shaking at all. “It has to. Otherwise how could—”

Arthur passed a hand over his face, wiping off the rain and wiping on an intensely _old_ weariness. “I should have guessed earlier that this was why you wanted it.”

“You thought I wanted the money? Or the damn property. You fucking—” Shaking his head started to shake the rest of Ambrose’s body, like he was about to explode.

Right. Time to get pointy sharp thing away from madman. “Ambrose. Drop the sword,” Lancelot called again, stepping out.

There was a hissing gasp behind him, and the scrunching of soaked grass as Arthur moved. “Lancelot? What are you—”

* * *

The first rule of a good client-detective relationship was that first names weren’t used. Arthur had already gotten Lancelot to break that, but that made sense, given the confusion that would have otherwise arisen. And at tea, Arthur had—somewhat hesitantly—addressed Lancelot as Mr. Dulac, which also made sense because they were in a business relationship, after all. Getting close enough for familiarity also meant getting close enough to get hurt, and they both seemed to understand that pretty well. So Arthur calling Lancelot _Lancelot_ in the graveyard skewed everything.

Lancelot took his eyes off Ambrose for one second. A second. He hadn’t even turned all the way to glance at Arthur when the gun fired.

“Fuck!” Snapping back, Lancelot shot, but Ambrose was in the act of flinging his gun at Lancelot, so the bullet caught the other man high in the shoulder. He stumbled, but didn’t even drop the sword.

The pistol soared over Lancelot’s shoulder as he ducked down and back just long enough to press his fingers against Arthur’s neck. Nothing.

“_Fuck_.” First Lancelot had gotten to Bede too late, and his friend had gotten a ripped throat. Then he’d watched German run over, seen Merlin’s henchman suicide, and now that fucking bastard had killed Art—his client.

The world suddenly was red.

He didn’t had a very clear memory of what happened next. There was running involved, because they somehow ended up near the fence with Lancelot taking another shot at Ambrose, and the son of a bitch knocking his gun away with the sword like they’d dropped into a swashbuckler film. And there was fighting after that, because he remembered the crushing squash of his knuckles connecting with the bullethole in Ambrose’s shoulder. Then the other man didn’t have the strength to effectively swing the sword, so he tossed it over the fence and went after it. Lancelot grabbed at Ambrose’s ankles and tried to drag the other man back, but a shoe-heel cracked under his chin, and then another one hit his temple, sending the curtains down.

According to his watch, he woke up bubbling in a puddle about five minutes later. Lancelot heaved himself out of the mud and desultorily ran through every swear word he knew. He stared at the dirt splashes on his hands, and how they made his fingers look old and gnarled and pathetic.

Something squished mud a few yards from him. Though he wasn’t curious in the least, old habits died hard. Lancelot looked up.

_Shit._

Pale, bloody, stunned-looking, Arthur waved weakly at the fence. “Did he…”

“You didn’t have a pulse.” Inanely enough, it came out sounding like Lancelot was accusing the man for still being alive. Well, maybe he should be. Because Arthur had been dead, and dead people didn’t come back. If that weren’t true, then Merlin would’ve been ripped apart by all his victims years back, and Lancelot’s nightmares would’ve been a lot more complicated.

Arthur blinked. Realized something and swallowed hard, eyes slightly panicky. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” With a groan, Lancelot lurched to his feet. He took a moment to kill off the residual dizziness from the head-blow, then carefully put one foot before the other until he was standing right in front of Arthur. Instinct reminded him to retrieve his gun along the way, which he then absently tucked away. “You were dead.”

Just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, Lancelot risked touching Arthur’s throat again. Warm, and there was definitely a pulse now. He pressed a little harder and felt it jump, then backed up a bit. “I think we need to have a long conversation.”

Some impressive calculations were going through Arthur’s eyes, flickering past so fast Lancelot couldn’t even begin to guess at them. Then the other man let out a sigh and pulled at his coat, trying to cover up the bloodstains. “We should get out of the rain first. My hotel’s not far away, and the cleaning staff don’t open their mouths about odd stains.”

“This happens a lot?” Lancelot asked, nearly laughing because he was still stuck in shock. His hair was plastered in his eyes, so he raked it out. Almost let out an unmanly scream when his fingertips brushed the huge bruise swelling up the side of his head.

Arthur didn’t answer, but instead half-turned toward the trail. He was still yanking at his clothes in an attempt to cover up the wide scarlet streak down his front, but it wasn’t working very well due to the light color of the fabric. After a long pause, Lancelot shrugged off his coat, which was dark gray, and handed it over. “Wad it up in front of you like you’re carrying something. If anyone asks, we picked up a sick kitten.”

“This happens a lot?” Arthur echoed, irony briefly tilting his lips upward. But he sobered almost immediately, and they walked to his car in strained silence.


	4. Backtrack

Belief and Lancelot didn’t get along very well. On the one hand, he had very little in terms of trust in society and government and church, having seen far too many pillars of the land get toppled in a whirl of stained sheets and bad newspaper mug-shots. But on the other hand, he’d been around the street and in the middle of some shit that didn’t make sense by any normal explanation. Whitechapel in particular was one large sinkhole of bizarreness, where reality seemed to bend ever-so-slightly.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t in Whitechapel. He was currently ensconced in a very fine hotel room, staring disgustedly at the raw pink scrapes Ambrose had given him while a dead man calmly made him an ice pack.

When they had arrived, Arthur had initially wanted to see to him first, but Lancelot had had to have that last piece of proof. So he’d refused the other man’s help and had kept close watch as Arthur had, with a fatalistic air, stripped off his coat, vest and shirt. There had been smears of blood all over the man’s chest—those faint ridges Lancelot had spotted at tea did indeed prove to be thick scars—but no bullethole anywhere, much less where Lancelot specifically remembered seeing red bloom first. Not to mention that Arthur moved like a perfectly healthy, if tired, man. “I’m not dreaming, am I?” Lancelot asked.

The other man handed him the ice pack, then leaned back against the dresser. Arthur had roughly washed himself and changed into a new shirt and trousers, but he’d haphazardly buttoned up the shirt and foregone the belt. The sleeves he’d just pushed to his elbows. “It would be nice to think so. Less complicated, anyway.”

He sounded like he was speaking for more than Lancelot, who shot him a sharp look. Then the ice touched Lancelot’s sore temple and he hissed, jerking it away. After a while, the burning ringing in his head quieted and he tried applying the ice again. It still hurt like a bitch in six-inch heels, but he could tolerate it and still think at the same time. “I’d imagine. How long have you been playing the wealthy recluse?”

One shoulder lifted and dropped. “Since medieval times,” Arthur said, carefully watching Lancelot’s reaction.

He must have been pretty disappointed, seeing as Lancelot was too busy having trouble absorbing everything to be real expressive. Even Galahad, who Lancelot had called fifteen minutes ago to warn about Ambrose, had commented on that, and normally Galahad didn’t notice shit. “That’s…what, seven hundred years?”

“I wasn’t born then, if that was the aim of your question.” Arthur stepped back and pulled out the drawer, then dug around in it till he came up with some bandages and some suspicious-looking tins of stuff. Plus a bottle of peroxide. “Would you like another towel?”

Lancelot reluctantly stopped scrubbing at his hair and put down the one he was currently using. He suddenly had the thought that Arthur probably didn’t want any word of his…special condition getting out, lest one of the cranks out there actually believe it and take off running on it, and so his position was considerably more precarious now. And his gun was…Lancelot casually ambled over to his jacket and holster, which were draped over a chair that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Versailles.

Interestingly enough, his train of thought sounded like _he’d_ decided to operate on the premise that Arthur’s story was true. Except if it wasn’t, then Lancelot had to have hallucinated, and he was dead certain his mind had been completely sober during the graveyard incident.

Snarling to himself, he turned back to Arthur with the stale taste of confusion welling up from beneath his tongue. “So when were you born?”

“The very late fourth century. A. D.” And Arthur even managed to say it with a straight face. Apparently, Lancelot’s face wasn’t nearly as deadpan, because the other man smiled ruefully to himself. “I know it’s hard to believe. And if you were a historian, I could prove it easily, but as you’re not, anything I could offer up wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“So no hundred-year-old pictures or portraits.” There was a slight wobble in Lancelot’s knees. Though he willed it to fuck off, it not only insisted on hanging around, but also on spreading to his fingers, which were soon noticeably trembling. He gripped the ice pack more tightly and pressed his other hand hard against the dresser top, trying to make it stop. “What about your family? Are you adopted as well?”

The other man had sorted through the tins till he’d found the one he wanted, and was now sniffing at the salve inside. Having decided it was all right, he pushed it towards Lancelot, who didn’t know what to make of it. Arthur flicked his eyes to Lancelot’s face, probably saw incipient panic, and very slowly, like Dag with a feral dog he was trying to charm, lifted a damp rag towards Lancelot’s side.

Lancelot flinched and Arthur paused, but after a moment, the other man reached for him again. For some reason, Lancelot allowed it, and then allowed Arthur to start the painful process of cleaning the scrapes with peroxide. It stung like hell, burning and foaming till Lancelot was savaging his lower lip bloody, but Arthur had a light touch that somewhat helped. And whatever the hell was in the salve that went on afterward did have a soothing effect, cooling away the hot itch.

“No,” Arthur said, so quietly Lancelot almost didn’t hear. He kept his head bent down, eyes fixed on Lancelot’s side, so his expression couldn’t be seen. “The Pendragons are—were—the descendents of the one child I had. The man I referred to as my uncle was the last. In nearly every generation, a few of them knew and helped me hide as one of them.”

“Except Ambrose, but then, you said he wasn’t blood to begin with.” One dab of peroxide scorched farther down and Lancelot stiffened, hissing through his teeth. He slitted his eyes and stared at the wall, trying and failing to comprehend the sheer magnitude encapsulated in Arthur’s few words. “That must be one hell of a family tree,” he muttered, like an idiot.

A soundless breath ghosted along Lancelot’s ribs and tickled his waistband. Then Arthur straightened up and started swiping at the scabs on Lancelot’s jaw. He smelled a little like the inside of Bede’s bookstore, only the ink-and-paper scent was mixed in with blood and grass. “It was. I loved them.”

“Even while you were watching them die on you?” The moment it came out, Lancelot was damning his tongue. He hadn’t meant that to go anywhere except inside his skull where it belonged.

Arthur sucked in a breath, but his fingers didn’t slow in their gentle work. “You…become accustomed to it after a few centuries.”

His eyes were boring a hole straight through the side of Lancelot’s face; if Lancelot turned just a fraction, he’d bet his office that Arthur had on that strange sad look again, like he desperately wanted to find something in Lancelot that wasn’t there. That nagged at Lancelot, grated on his nerves. When Arthur prodded up his chin to get at the rest of the cuts from Ambrose’s shoe, the feel of the other man’s breath on Lancelot’s skin made the itching inside even harsher.

So he made himself think about other things, since shoving Arthur away wasn’t exactly an option. Lancelot went over the tea interview, the happenings at the graveyard…recalled something Ambrose had said, which dovetailed into a stray memory of a talk with Bede. His old friend had had a thing for Arthurian legend, and often spent whole evenings forcing Lancelot to listen about what a moron and doormat for the ladies his namesake supposedly had been. Bede had also had a theory about the real king behind the stories.

“Late fourth century? So you…stopped dying during the early fifth?” God, he couldn’t even talk about it without sounding like a complete jackass. “And your family claimed to be descended from King Arthur.”

“King isn’t really the most accurate term for what I was.” Arthur’s fingers stopped moving, then slowly drew away. He kept his eyes locked with Lancelot’s for a moment before dropping them to stare at his hands. “How much of this do you believe?”

Lancelot had to sit down. That wasn’t the most impressive reaction to have, but it was the one he was having, and he had to sit. So he did, on top of the low dresser. The melting ice pack clattered into an empty champagne bucket. “Get back to me in a few days,” he muttered, wishing to God that it had just been another adultery case instead of this.

Thankfully, Arthur didn’t try to push the point and just left Lancelot alone for a few minutes while he put away everything. Then he rummaged through the closet and came up with a pair of trousers, which he proffered to Lancelot. “These should work reasonably well for you.”

It was mildly interesting how, up until that moment, Lancelot hadn’t noticed how annoyingly clinging and scratchy his soaked, muddy pants were. He briefly debated the wisdom of taking anything more from Arthur, then reluctantly stretched out a hand for the trousers. When Arthur leaned forward to meet it, Lancelot lunged and seized the other man’s wrist, while his other hand dropped to his pocket and pulled his gun half-out. “You know, I am curious about something. How did you happen to stop dying?”

Arthur didn’t exactly struggle; he did pull back, but only enough to keep Lancelot from making him fall forward. His pupils went wide and stayed that way, though the rest of his face froze into a dangerous calm. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“From the way Ambrose was talking back there, it sounded like he thought it was the sword. He was trying to resurrect his kid, wasn’t he?” Lancelot rolled his hips and let himself slide off the dresser, making himself look like he held many more cards than he did. Though as it was, he thought he was beginning to see just what kind of game they were all gambling on. “I don’t know whether he knows you’re literally the family relic, but he certainly knows that what you are is around. Which would seem to make him a danger to you. Though anyone would say I’m more so, since I know you and the relic are one and the same.”

Maybe Arthur’s face was emotionless, but his eyes were a firestorm. Unfortunately, whatever feelings were in there were too numerous and tangled up in each other for Lancelot to pick out individual ones. And then they suddenly snapped together into something intense and determined and bright. It occurred to Lancelot that in…fifteen hundred years or so, Arthur had probably learned a hell of a lot about handling himself.

But all the other man did was shake his head and relax, letting Lancelot hold onto his wrist without offering _any_ kind of resistance. He didn’t even glance at the pistol. “I’m not going to do anything except ask that you don’t spread that fact around,” Arthur finally said, serenity personified. Or maybe it was fatalism. “I think you’re a reasonable man, and I trust that you’ll do the right thing.”

“You trust me?” Lancelot snorted, dropping Arthur’s wrist. Incredibly enough, the other man was still holding out the trousers. After a long second, Lancelot took them. “You’re a fool.”

“I know. But I do trust you.” Arthur didn’t elaborate on that peculiar statement, but instead rolled down his cuffs and buttoned them, then threw on a coat to look respectable. He said something about getting food sent up to them and went out, though he could’ve just phoned in the order.

Nice of him, Lancelot thought. The epitome of consideration. And he hadn’t really answered Lancelot’s question. Questions.

* * *

The trousers were too big and Lancelot had to roll up the cuffs, which made him feel like a scrawny twelve-year-old again, but they were definitely a cut above what he was used to. While Arthur wasn’t obvious about it, he certainly knew how to live.

And since Arthur was also taking his time getting back, Lancelot did a bit of looking around. After all, it was pretty clear that the other man wasn’t averse to telling partial truths, or to withholding it altogether, so independent investigation was the only way Lancelot would know for certain that the information he was getting was accurate, or relevant.

For some reason, he felt curiously hesitant about riffling through Arthur’s possessions. He blamed it on still being shaken up from earlier.

The closet didn’t yield anything except fine clothing, all of which had empty pockets. Arthur didn’t seem to be a hat-man, since there wasn’t one anywhere in the room, and Lancelot had only seen him bareheaded. Suitcase was supremely organized, with quality fountain pens and several neat files of properties, one of which appeared to be a government warehouse, contents classified but actual name of the owner being ‘that member of the Pendragon family who bears the sword Excalibur.’ So that part was true.

“Can’t believe they haven’t updated the contracts by now. Bureaucratic foot-draggers,” Lancelot snorted, carefully reclosing the suitcase. He set it back down at the angle at which he’d found it, then critically studied it. Reached out and flicked the handle to lie on the other side.

Dresser drawers yielded more clothes. Bedside table held only the usual Bible, though oddly enough, it had been turned face-down. Likewise, the bathroom didn’t hold anything out of the ordinary. It also was ridiculously organized, like Arthur had nothing better to do than to set up bottles in perfect ranks.

Then again, Guin had mocked Arthur for being lonely and desperate. At the time, Lancelot had chalked that up to a combination of Guin’s bitchiness and Arthur’s trying to meddle from the sidelines, but now he had to wonder.

But even the loneliest rich man had to have a wallet around somewhere. Probably a day-book with addresses and contact information as well, and while Arthur might’ve taken the first with him, Lancelot could see no reason why he’d take the second as well. It wasn’t as if Arthur had been planning to leave the hotel…Lancelot’s stomach did an abrupt flip-lurch, and he swore at himself, because stupidly enough, he was trusting Arthur a bit farther than he should. Immortality aside, Arthur was only a client. He shouldn’t be having this kind of effect on Lancelot.

With redoubled resolve, Lancelot went back to the main room and did another circle of the whole place, ending in the bedroom. This time, he spotted the edge of a case sticking out from under the bed. It was covered in black leather like the rest of Arthur’s luggage, but seemed more like an instrument case, or…Arthur was a self-admitted weapons buff. When Lancelot cracked it open, there were two shortish swords gleaming up at him.

They looked old. And familiar for some reason, like he’d seen them before. Very familiar…Lancelot put a hand down and gingerly touched the hilt of one. Then he snatched his hand back and held it to his chest, breathing suddenly hard and fast.

“Static electricity,” he told himself, snapping the lid down. “Just like shocking yourself on a doorknob.”

Lancelot warily shoved the case back under the bed just in time to hear footsteps coming up the hall. He hastily got up off his knees and flopped onto the bed by the phone, dialing his office number.

On the fifth ring, Lancelot gave up and slammed down the phone in disgust the same moment Arthur walked in. The other man gave Lancelot a questioning look as he set down a platter of coffee and croissants on the dresser. “You need to get in contact with someone?”

“I thought I’d bring my partner up to date, but it seems she’s already left for the night.” Lie. Goddamn Guin, who should’ve been there for another hour, but who apparently had completely renounced answering the fucking phone. If she was going to be like that, then maybe Lancelot should bother with hiring an actual secretary.

Arthur was staring at Lancelot’s cut hand, which bandages were now all ragged and…“You’re bleeding.”

“Fuck. The stitches…” Lancelot held his hand over the wastebasket and undid the cloth. As the last round fell away, he gritted his teeth and prepared himself for the worst.

Actually, it was a lot better than he’d expected. Some of the stitches looked strained, but none had torn out. The bleeding was coming from the shallower end, where the scab had ripped off, but it had already almost stopped; Lancelot wadded up the cleaner bits of the bandages and pressed them against that spot, ignoring the twinges of hurt that sparked.

“Are any of them out? I can call a doctor.” And here came Arthur with fresh bandages and the peroxide. He pried off Lancelot’s hand and gave the wound an appraising look that was entirely too professional—right, former king, back when men hacked each other up with swords.

“No, it’s fine.” Except for the fact that Arthur was now washing peroxide over the cut, which felt like acid. Some days, Lancelot seriously considered taking up a nice quiet job, like maybe librarian, where he didn’t get banged up all the time.

Though he supposed Arthur’s nursing wasn’t all that bad a consequence of getting hurt…and Lancelot needed to smack himself once the other man had let go of his hand. Arthur, however, seemed to do everything deliberately, from chasing down every single possible hint of infection with burning white foam to carefully smoothing a new wrap around Lancelot’s hand and wrist.

“You’re really nice, considering how long you’ve been around,” Lancelot remarked. Funnily enough, his voice sounded a bit thick and slow, like he’d had too much to drink. “I would’ve thought that seeing so much of humanity would’ve turned you cynical by now. Or mad.”

The side of Arthur’s mouth momentarily turned up, and he muttered something that didn’t sound like English. Too liquid and musical.

“What?” Lancelot leaned a little closer, like he would understand more if he could only hear better. He must have been more tired than he thought, because his head was a bit dizzy. “What was that?”

“Welsh,” was Arthur’s succinct answer. He capped the bottle of peroxide, rolled up the unused bandages, and set it all on the side-table.

The other man started to rise, but Lancelot grabbed his shoulder and kept him where he was. “I know people that speak that, and it sounds different.”

Beneath Lancelot’s hand, Arthur’s shoulder moved in an uneasy shrug. Something dark filtered into Arthur’s face and made it unreadable again, but there were those same cracks at mouth and eyes that Lancelot had seen during the tea. “It’s an older version.”

“Oh, right. Since you’re living history.” Contrary to what Lancelot had always heard, it didn’t seem that time erased everything: Arthur had no mark where he’d been shot earlier in the night, but he had very real scars coiling over his shoulder and ribs, and hooking around to his back. The top of one was peeking from Arthur’s shirt, which still had the top button undone. When Lancelot ran a knuckle along it, he felt its roughness flex and shiver against his skin. “Ambrose thinks that sword is the key.”

“He’s wrong. I’ve tried to tell him, but he doesn’t believe me. As you guessed, he doesn’t know who I really am.” Arthur’s voice rasped a little at the end of each word.

“How do you know? Did you try to raise a loved one from the dead?” Lancelot asked, slowly flattening the hand he had on Arthur’s shoulder from a tight grip to a molded curve. He could tell when the pattern of Arthur’s breathing changed from the altered rhythm of the rise and fall of the man’s shoulder.

Instead of answering, Arthur squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled like he’d been stabbed. Then he grabbed Lancelot’s other hand from his throat and pressed its palm to his mouth, kissing at the bandages covering it. His tongue flicked in between Lancelot’s fingers, teasing the webbing there with a flash of wet warmth, before withdrawing to twine about and thoroughly lick the knuckles and tips. It was like he’d gone into a frenzy.

People usually did that to forget something. Lancelot was fully planning on asking Arthur what that was, but his free hand somehow found itself shifted from Arthur’s shoulder to cradling the back of Arthur’s head. All right, Lancelot thought. First get the man to stop devouring his hand, and then ask.

Except Arthur had by then moved to the inside of Lancelot’s wrist. Slow and purposeful, the man kissed a line up the inside of Lancelot’s arm. He lingered at each spot, teeth coming down just enough to be felt, and left a spreading prickle behind; the individual sparks of heat spread swiftly outward to merge together till the whole arm was disabled by tremors. Lancelot’s fingers curled into Arthur’s hair and pulled, but the wrong way.

It wasn’t the kind of demure, soft kiss the romantic films showed, and it wasn’t the suave passion of the dramas. Hell, it wasn’t even the kind of cold, hard, furious kiss Lancelot could get from Guin plus a few too many shared bottles of whiskey. What happened when his and Arthur’s mouths came together was messy and unpretty and ferocious, all teeth catching lips and tongues because they were hurrying too fast and didn’t give a damn, hands clutching and elbows knocking into each other.

It wasn’t graceful at all. But it knocked the feet out from under Lancelot, and it got him onto his back onto the mattress so fast he spat his breath into Arthur’s mouth and thought he was breathing in. And then the other man had his tongue halfway down Lancelot’s throat and his hands the same distance into those borrowed trousers. Suddenly it was a good thing they were oversized on Lancelot, because that meant it only took a twist and a lift to kick the damn things off. Peeling away Arthur’s took some more doing, but they managed it without ever parting their lips.

Lancelot was ripping at Arthur’s damn shirt buttons because the things were too small for his bandaged fingers to manage, and he only had that hand free because his other one seemed determined to search out every patch of wrecked flesh Arthur had. Not to mock or anything, because while Lancelot’s worst scars weren’t nearly as bad as a few of Arthur’s, he still was in no position to be vain about that. To drag his nails along them, stroke them with his fingers like he was trying to impress them on his memory. And maybe he was. The habits of the job came out in the oddest ways sometimes.

At any rate, Arthur liked it a hell of a lot, moaning low in the back of his throat and pushing down with his hips so their cocks ground each other hard. When Lancelot ran the heel of his hand across one long one that stretched a cockeyed diagonal between shoulderblades, the other man whipped against him. Then humped up just enough to drag his prick along the inside of Lancelot’s thigh.

Some of the scrapes were probably going to be bleeding by the end of this. If Lancelot paused to think about it, he could feel them twitching pain. His jaw was straining against the hard kisses, too, and the hurt there wanted to make him stop and think about what the hell he was doing. The last time he’d gotten this close to a client, she’d turned out to be setting him up for a double murder, and he’d only escaped with his skin _and_ his license because Gawain had bullshitted the police till Lancelot could pin the crime on that cunt.

Then Arthur sank down, his tongue lolling out of Lancelot’s mouth and laving its way down Lancelot. The other man lavished attention on the bruising beneath Lancelot’s chin until thinking decided to take a number and go to the end of the line, then went further and further down. Detoured at one nipple, spent a vaguely curiously long time at one stretch of unmarked skin between Lancelot’s lower left rib and the top of his hipbone, like Arthur was used to getting a reaction from that. Or like he was expecting to find something there that wasn’t…well, the man couldn’t have been celibate for fifteen centuries. Maybe it was a reflex left over from some old lover.

Lancelot bucked up before he realized what he was doing, let alone why. He’d just grasped that—he didn’t _want_ Arthur’s head stuck in some memory—when the other man got the message and resumed moving. And Arthur didn’t stop till he had gone the length of Lancelot’s prick in one long, swirling lick.

Learning from experience. Fucking _God_. The man didn’t just swallow Lancelot’s cock—he wrapped it in hot, slippery velvet that squeezed and relaxed in the most damnable, relentless rhythm possible that still stopped short of being enough. Digging his nails into the pristine, top-quality linen, Lancelot squirmed like a whore and cursed like a longshoreman. “More, goddamn it. I can’t—God—harder—”

And Arthur did.

Coming clenched all of Lancelot’s muscles and then ripped the tension out of them from head to prick in a successive wave. He tried to do the decent thing and warn Arthur, but…well, turned out it didn’t matter. Arthur swallowed without hesitating. And then he crawled back onto the bed, nuzzling at random shaking parts of Lancelot on the way.

A glance downwards showed that Arthur’s prick was still hanging heavy and red and hard between his legs, which finally spurred Lancelot into moving. He ducked around Arthur’s nibbling and reached for it, then grinned when the other man gasped into his neck. “I like to be fair about this. It makes for a more civil morning-after.”

Arthur lifted his head long enough to smile back at Lancelot, and for the first time, the man looked like he was genuinely enjoying himself, without any of that wary reserve. “Richest blow-job you’ve ever had, I suppose. So it would be only fair.”

“My God, you can make jokes.” Surprised, Lancelot let his fingers slow down. But then Arthur made a little protesting sound that somehow ripped into Lancelot’s gut, deep enough to make Lancelot almost actually apologize while he sped up again.

He curled the fingers of one hand around Arthur’s prick, modulating the pressure till the man urgently started to mouth at Lancelot’s collarbone. Then he sent his other hand playing further back, teasing Arthur’s balls, wandering through coarse hair till his fingertip slipped in a little. That got him a shudder and a garbled stream of English. Passing his thumb through the stickiness gathering at the cock’s tip produced a low whistling whine.

And then Arthur…seemed to fragment on Lancelot, going from demanding but controlled rhythm to wild jerking, voice breaking into ragged chanting of that weird Welsh he spoke. His head flung up for a second that hung in space while wetness at the corner of his eyes caught light and sparked. Then he whipped himself against Lancelot, spraying thick warm stuff between them, and collapsed with his face in the blankets.

When Arthur finally lifted his head against, his whole face was covered in sweat, and Lancelot couldn’t tell whether or not those had been tears.

* * *

Arthur easily fell asleep, his arm over Lancelot’s hip and his head tucked into the curve of Lancelot’s neck. Lancelot, on the other hand, stayed staring at the ceiling for a very long time while his fingers traced idle patterns on Arthur’s back. He had the feeling he’d just done something lightly that he should have taken much more seriously.

* * *

An insistent phone cracked the morning open. First it wormed into Lancelot’s ear, making him try to burrow into the pillow, and then it shrilled through his skull, which finally convinced him to sit up. “Goddamn it, Guin. Can’t you ever—”

Green amusement stared up at him. Then Arthur stretched an arm behind Lancelot and unhooked the phone. “Hello?”

“Damn it,” Lancelot muttered again, rubbing hard at the flush that wanted to spread down his cheeks. He pulled his legs out of the tangled sheets and slid them over the side of the bed, groping for his clothes—well, for Arthur’s clothes. Top item on the list for the day was getting down to the office and the spare suit Lancelot kept there; wearing another man’s things was a little too comfortable for him right now.

Come to think of it, Arthur was being extremely accepting of Lancelot’s slip-of-the-tongue. Most people—well, women, but Lancelot had met a few men in his time like that—would’ve thrown a fit and probably tried to kick him out the door as well. Or at least demanded an explanation, whereas Arthur was merely answering the caller.

Interestingly enough, his expression froze up for a second, then relaxed into the kind of smile condemned criminals getting a reprieve plastered on. He lowered the phone, but didn’t hand it over till Lancelot had finished pulling on his trousers. “Your associate,” Arthur said, holding it out. “Not Guin. A man?”

Well, Lancelot had left the room’s number with Galahad, but his friend didn’t have any reason to call him, unless Tristan was passing on word that he’d found Ambrose. And that, Lancelot doubted—he’d shot the man, but Ambrose had still had the strength to hop a fence. Not to mention they’d been having trouble finding the man before, so it was unlikely he would slip up now and be so gracious as to leave them an easy-to-follow trail.

*Lancelot! Where the hell have you been?*

“Gawain?” Lancelot asked, startled. He turned to get his shirt, which was flung over a chair, and glimpsed a curious flinch passing over Arthur’s face. But before he could be certain about that, the other man had gotten off the bed and moved towards the closet.

The phone spat an angry crackle that called back Lancelot’s attention. *Yes, Gawain. Goddamn it, I’ve been calling your office for the past hour—no one’s there.*

“No one?” Guin should have been long since in, according to the clock…and Lancelot needed to get going. His car was still parked by the cemetery, he had those coroner’s reports to skim through, and he needed to lay down the law with Guin. Hopefully, she’d listen.

The least she could do was make him coffee, Lancelot grumbled to himself. He dropped the lid back on the coffeepot and snorted to blow out the smell of cold burnt-bean water. No matter how top-notch the grind was, it never tasted good on a second heating.

Hands and eyes busy with the intricacies of tie-tying, Arthur nevertheless found a second to look over. “I can send down for a fresh pot.”

Lancelot covered the phone with his hand to mutter a thanks, then rolled his eyes at himself. Arthur had already answered the call and spoken to Gawain, so it wasn’t as if there was a secret to keep. God, when everything was over, Gawain was never going to shut up about that. “Gawain, Guin opens up at 7 A. M. prompt—wait. When’s the last time you saw her? Wasn’t Tristan supposed to check in with her last night?”

*I saw her at lunch yesterday, when we were going over the coroner’s findings on Bede and German. And Tristan saw her at dinner, but she was in a hurry and drove off right after they talked.* Resigned sigh. *Christ, Lancelot. I’ve given up trying to tell you not to mix bed and business, but you could at least let us know where you’re spending the night.*

“Don’t start, all right?” Thankfully, Arthur had gone out into the main room to get breakfast, so Lancelot didn’t have to crouch over the receiver any more. “Meet me at my office in half an hour.”

After he hung up, Lancelot threw on the rest of his clothes and his shoulder holster. The fight in the rain last night hadn’t been too good to the leather, but he didn’t have the time to do anything about that, so he just put up with the chafing. At least the shirt and vest did pad the worst of it.

Though God knew where his tie had ended up—and God knew where Guin had gone off to now. As snappish as she could be sometimes, she was diligent about opening the office and being around to take most calls; maybe that was her way of monopolizing information flow and getting an edge, but it was still useful. So if Guin was not only late about unlocking in the morning, but _two hours_ late, then Lancelot started to worry. “Guin, you bitch, if you’ve gone off and tried something…”

“What?” A servant carrying in one hell of a breakfast spread temporarily blocked Arthur, but the other man had the sense to get the penguin snoot out fast. Then he turned to Lancelot—briefly grinned at how Lancelot was sucking down the damn good coffee—and arched an eyebrow. “What happened? Is there a problem?”

“Nah. No. But something’s come up that I need to check out. I’m sure you’ve got a full schedule today, so if you could just have somebody drop me off by my car—”

Good thing Lancelot had already swallowed his mouthful of coffee, because otherwise Arthur would’ve gotten his tongue scalded rather badly. As it was, the way Lancelot’s hand had decided to grab onto the other man’s head had to be pretty painful, but Arthur didn’t seem to care.

Lancelot nearly tossed his coffee over the other man’s shoulder. He just restrained himself to setting it down, and then he clutched at Arthur’s coat lapels for support, since his knees were weak-arsed sons of bitches.

When they had to part for breath, Arthur still didn’t want to back off, and Lancelot ended up having to push his arm between them. God. The man kissed like a devil, but it was the half-lowered, trembling eyelashes that really jabbed at Lancelot’s gut. Normally that kind of expression only showed up on those sappy old army movies, where the gold-hearted hero had to tell his girl he was going out to die. Which Lancelot was not planning on doing, but damned if he didn’t want to get sucked in by those eyes instead of doing what he was going to.

He took a deep breath, watched Arthur do likewise and pull himself together. “I’ve got to go.”

That was a lot nicer than how Lancelot usually would have put it, but somehow, he still felt like a bastard. His fingers drifted from the back of Arthur’s head to the nape of the man’s neck, then drew down the side of Arthur’s collar. The other man turned his head so his lips brushed along Lancelot’s wrist and hand as they dropped from him.

* * *

Silent and wound into himself, Arthur dropped Lancelot off himself. The only time he spoke was when Lancelot was almost out of the car: “Have dinner with me.”

Lancelot gripped the top of the door, bowed his head and wondered why the hell his life couldn’t go in a straight line. No matter what he did, it took zigs and zags and sometimes just looped back to kick him in the arse. “I generally try not to fuck my clients. Conflict of interest problem.”

“I see.” The words were short, leaden, and like gunshot wounds in the belly.

Some day, this shit was going to get Lancelot killed. On that, he was in complete agreement with Gawain. But the other man wasn’t actually living it, and so had no fucking idea how hard it was to play it Puritan. And hell, Lancelot had always thought the Puritans were a bit cracked—giving up Christmas? The only way anyone got through winter sane was by pasting on a big smile and getting dead drunk a few times.

“Goddamn it.” Swinging back in banged Lancelot’s cut hand against something, but then he had fingers fisted in Arthur’s shirt and was moaning like he was about to die if he didn’t shove his tongue far enough down Arthur’s throat. He thought he felt a button snap off.

At any rate, Arthur’s hands pretty much ruined what was left of Lancelot’s coat with the kneading and clawing, but it was worth it. Hopefully.

“Ask me again after I bring your sword back,” Lancelot gasped, finally pulling himself away. This time, Arthur let him go without looking like the world was collapsing. Close, but not quite like that.

* * *

At the office, Lancelot had just enough time to change and spruce himself up to passable before Gawain showed up. The other man slammed through the door with uncharacteristic force and started growling the moment he saw Lancelot. “You know, I’m happy to help, but it’d be nice if you actually paid attention. If not, why the fuck are you bothering to ask me to do things?”

“Look, I told you things went weird for a while. Ambrose showed up, nearly cut off my head with that goddamned sword…anyway, Guin was supposed to be handling the office end for the day.” A pair of manila folders on her desk caught Lancelot’s eye, and he wandered over to flip them open.

Gawain was still venting, talking about how he had to drag Galahad out of a bar backroom to find out what number to call, but being around Guin had taught Lancelot how to tune out scoldings like that. He felt a little odd about doing it to Gawain, who was a sensible and trustworthy man that usually said things worth listening to, but at the moment, the files were more important. They were the coroner’s reports.

Bede’s said that he hadn’t been dead too long before Lancelot had found him, but otherwise, there wasn’t anything in there that Lancelot hadn’t already known. Not good. Since Lancelot had only had time for a quick inspection, he’d been hoping the police might catch a clue to Ambrose’s whereabouts that he’d missed. He should have known better than to put his trust in his official competitors. German’s file was pretty light, too; they’d gone with the angle that it was a disgruntled client coming back to take down German’s cheating arse for good.

“…and she didn’t even read all the way through those,” Gawain muttered, starting to wind down. “Guin stopped on the stomach contents page and politely booted me out.”

“Yeah, she’s rude that way. Sorry, but the last man who tried to change that about her got a lead pipe to the head—stomach contents?” Something about that struck Lancelot funny and he flipped back to that page in German’s. Then his hand crept to Bede’s and shuffled through till he found the corresponding page.

They weren’t the same, but there were common components in each. Alcohol, of course. Sauerkraut and escargot, which was an odd combination…oh. Christ, Guin. Lancelot smacked his forehead and cursed her inflated self-confidence at least two times over.

“What?” Taken aback by Lancelot’s sudden vehemence, Gawain abandoned the rebuking in favor of craning his head so he could read. “Where did _they_ eat dinner?”

“Badon Hill. It’s one of those new fancy experimental restaurants. Guin was blathering about it a week ago—someone told her about the bizarre menu and she wanted to go see, but the bank account was a little too…shit! That’s where Ambrose has to be staying!” Lancelot flicked the files shut and grabbed his coat and hat off the hooks, throwing them on as he clattered down the stairs. He could hear Gawain following, but he just had to hope the other man could keep up. Guin hadn’t been seen since dinner…

Gawain did keep up enough to jump in the passenger’s side of Lancelot’s car. He opened his mouth, but didn’t manage to say anything till after they’d spun onto the road. “He’s staying at the restaurant?”

“No, but he’s staying near it. Bede never could pass up a dinner invitation—Ambrose probably used that to soften him up enough for Bede to take him back to the bookstore. Usually Bede did his consultations on the corner where there were witnesses.” Lancelot slammed down on the accelerator and soared through three yellow lights and a red one. Someone blared hell at him, but half of the honk was cut off by the sharp turn he made. “I knew there was something wrong with that…got distracted by…”

Teeth gritted, Gawain was hanging onto the door strap like his life was suspended solely from that frayed bit of leather. He rammed his heels into the floor and braced himself, then grabbed for Lancelot’s arm. Missed because Lancelot was whipping around another corner. “So…you’re saying Ambrose used that restaurant as neutral ground.”

“Okay neighborhood, pretty quiet, no one likes to get themselves involved in anything. The restaurant opening was the biggest splash the place had had in decades, probably.” At the next light, Lancelot swerved left and detoured into an alley barely big enough for the car. Beside him, the other man was cursing and staring bug-eyed at the bricks that were nearly scraping them, but Lancelot paid that no mind. “If Ambrose is anything like typical rich, he’s keeping a tab at Badon Hill and having the bills sent to his room. Guin probably charmed the head waiter or cook or someone into letting her see the books.”

She had a heavy grudge against men who abused women in some way, and Ambrose certainly fell into that category. On the other hand, Guin had a pretty superior opinion of herself that sometimes verged on hubris, and she definitely was going to—would have underestimated Ambrose. Hell, Lancelot had, until that scuffle in the graveyard. Ambrose wasn’t the typical criminal, concerned only with extracting the greatest possible profit from the least possible risks: he was a mourning, desperate, crazed man who was snatching at straws and paying no attention to the ground crumbling away from his feet.

To be honest, it wasn’t too uncommon a story. Money was the biggest weakness around, but both Lancelot and Gawain had seen men break from other pressures. Whatever had taken hold of Arthur for a few minutes last night, for example…

…Lancelot needed a long swig of whiskey. And, quite possibly, a sharp blow to the head. At the least, he needed to pay attention to the matters at hand, and stop getting distracted by his wealthy, fascinating, good-looking, extremely long-lived client. Fuck, his life made less than no sense now.

They pulled up to the restaurant a few minutes later, Gawain having figured out the rest of the details in the meantime. Badon Hill was just opening for the lunch crowd, but it had already attracted a bit of a line, so the food must have been rather good. Too bad, because it meant more shoving and elbowing for Lancelot and Gawain.

An officious-looking twat pushed through from the other side and looked down his greasy nose at them. “Sirs, I’m afraid that—”

“You’re afraid?” Lancelot drawled, taking hold of his left elbow. After nudging off an indignant dowager, Gawain took the man’s other side. “Well, fancy that. So am I. The whole world’s afraid, my friend.”

Like Lancelot had told Gawain, this crowd would murmur protests, but wouldn’t interfere if one went at them with a dangerous expression. Frog-marching the little black-and-white-suited shit back into the restaurant went easier than Moses parting the Red Sea. And once the waiter was safely tucked into a dark corner, with Gawain holding off the rest, it only took two seconds of crushing the bastard’s balls for him to admit that yes, a leggy brunette had been in the other day. Yes, she’d asked to see the accounts and he’d be pleased to show sir which one she’d been most interested in. Yes, a hulking blond gentleman with a German accent, who’d been rumored to be one of the last Pendragons, had regularly eaten dinner in the back for the past five days.

“And thank you, sir, for your prompt and comprehensive aid.” When Lancelot let go of the other man’s family jewels, the pathetic son of a bitch nearly collapsed on top of him, whimpering. Disgusted, Lancelot shoved him against the wall and headed for the exit.

He had to pause there to wait for Gawain, who had sidestepped to snitch a copy of their wine list. “Hmm…I’m not one of the suppliers. That should be fixed,” Gawain muttered.

Lancelot finished wiping off his hand with his handkerchief and pushed Gawain onto the sidewalk, then pulled him by the elbow towards a well-appointed but discreet boarding-house at the end of the street. “Later. You’re covered, right?”

The other man looked annoyed and swept back his coat to show the large pistol nestled beneath one arm. “Guin’s always handled herself all right.”

“I know.” As they approached the boardinghouse, Lancelot took out his gun and let it dangle casually by his hip. He noted the path leading around the back—second door—and the balcony on the second floor. “That’s what I’m hoping for,” he muttered, tasting sour worry in his mouth.

The clerk at the front desk not only was happy to look at Lancelot’s photo and inform them of which room Ambrose had been using, but also regaled them with a tale of bumping sounds and muffled arguments that had kept the other guests up all night. But he hadn’t seen any woman resembling Guin, which was bad news. It meant she hadn’t even had the sense to make it a public confrontation; she’d surprised Ambrose, or Ambrose had surprised her. The knot growing in Lancelot’s gut twisted itself another loop.

He led the way up the stairs, still keeping his gun down because there was the occasional guest wandering about. But once they got to Ambrose’s hallway, they stepped into eerie quiet; Ambrose had asked for a room as far from the others as possible, though that alone couldn’t account for the prickling on the back of Lancelot’s neck.

The door was slightly ajar, and shoeprints led from it towards the stairwell to what Lancelot presumed was the back door. While Lancelot bent down to check the dark stains, Gawain carefully edged around and nudged open the door with his gun.

“Lancelot…” Gawain croaked.

“Blood,” Lancelot groaned, flicking his nail through the crusts on the carpet. He had to heave himself up in order to go into the room.

Strange bumps, hell. It was a wonder no one had cried murder, considering the wreck that the room was. Overturned chairs, sheets ripped off the bed, and more dried blood. Some of it looked like it’d dripped down from something—most likely Ambrose’s shot arm as he’d moved about—and a half-open kit in the corner showed that the man had tried to doctor himself. But there were arcing sprays on the wall and the floor, and a hunting knife stuck in a puddle of dark brown in the bathroom doorway. Bede’s throat had been slashed open in the shape of a cross…or a sword held vertically, Lancelot remembered.

“Oh, shit.” Gun lowered, face greenish, Gawain turned back to the hallway and put a hand to his mouth.

But the grim scene wasn’t quite enough for Lancelot, and he couldn’t be satisfied with not quite. It was one of the reasons he was such a good private investigator. Not that that was giving him any comfort now.

Walking was like lifting heavy lead weights with his toes as he moved towards the bathroom. By now it was obvious Ambrose had vacated the premises, but Lancelot kept his gun up anyway. He slowly stepped into the bathroom, doing his damnedest not to tread in any of the splashes, and looked about. Nothing but the signs of a horrific struggle.

“What the hell? There should be a…” Lancelot turned around and then threw himself back a pace. His heel slid in a puddle and that almost sent him careening into the sink, but at the last moment he managed to grab the doorframe.

The wreck behind the shower curtain inched out again, revealing ripped and stained clothes and huge, huge dark eyes. “Lancelot?”

“Oh, Jesus. Guin.” Things swam before his eyes again and Lancelot had to resteady himself a second time. By then, she’d gotten out of the tub and was tottering toward him, every bit of her shaking…and then she crumpled.

He just barely caught her. Then her fingers were knotting in his shirt and she was making little sobbing gasps into his neck, and Lancelot was trying to stroke her hair with his gunhand. Cursing, he shoved that thing away and shrugged off his coat, wrapping it about her. “Christ. What hap—never mind. Come on, stop…quiet, quiet. It’s…he’s not here.”

“Again. Again. Only it was worse this time…” She went too damned silent after that, but Gawain’s eyes looked about ready to pop out, and Lancelot had some fast decisions to make.

* * *

He ended up calling Arthur. As hooked up as Gawain was with the local police force, even he didn’t have enough strings by himself to get them out of the investigation and somewhere quiet. Not to mention that Lancelot didn’t really want to hear Guin explain to the police why the hell she had _no injuries_ on her, and just a lot of blood. Not until he heard her explanation first.

She pulled herself together fast compared to everyone else, but frighteningly slow compared to her usual composure. And when Arthur showed up to start swinging his influence around, Guin took one look at him and nearly fainted on Lancelot. Even when she was stuffed to the gills with bourbon, she still hadn’t ever passed out on him. Across the room, on the seat next to him, yes, but not on him.

Gawain, Lancelot and Guin had agreed that the best story would be Guin had gone up with Ambrose with another girl, changed her mind about ending her date with him there and gotten into a fight. Taken a few slashes to the chest and been knocked out before she saw what happened to her friend; luckily, some of the sheets were missing so it could be assumed Ambrose had carried away the other “body” and hadn’t come back before Lancelot had shown up looking for his “girl.” In truth, Ambrose had probably used them to wrap up Excalibur.

“I called Tristan. Maybe Ambrose could hide out in the middle-class alleys before, but in the condition he’s in now, he’s got to head for the slums.” Gawain was trying to light his and Lancelot’s cigarettes, but his hands were still shaking too much.

Whereas Lancelot’s had long since worked out every last shake, and were unnaturally still. Though it did mean he could get their smokes lighted, so there was a silver lining to that, at least. He bent down and ducked inside Arthur’s car, where they had Guin bundled into a spare long coat of Arthur’s, and flicked the flame past the tip of her cigarette. “Watch your step. That bastard’s completely nuts—he thinks he can raise the dead with that sword. I’m not joking.”

“Even if you were, he still doesn’t mind swinging that thing around. That’s dangerous enough by itself.” Guin pulled the coat more tightly around herself and tucked her chin down, leaving only enough space for her smoke to drift out. She sounded rattled.

Well, of course she was fucking rattled. And so was Lancelot, and part of that was because he just wasn’t used to seeing Guin raw like this. It…in a way, he’d come to depend on her being a hard-nosed, competent bitch, and it hurt him to see that broken down.

“I’ll let Tristan know. And we’ll call the moment we get word.” The other man started to pivot away, then paused. “Er…”

Of the many things Lancelot was, a good nurse wasn’t one of them. Apparently, he was going to spend another night depending on Arthur…and goddamn it, why the hell was he looking forward to that?

Lancelot dug out his car keys and handed them to Gawain, swallowing hard against his idiocy. “Take care of my car, all right? And call…the hotel if it’s before 7 in the morning. After that, you’d better call the office. I’ll be there, anyway.”

For a second, the other man just stood there and jingled the keys in his hand, like he suspected he was dreaming. Then he clapped Lancelot on the shoulder and tipped his hat at Guin, who managed a hint of her old serene hauteur in her smile back. “Yeah. Take care of yourselves, too.”

Gawain left. Arthur was still inside, giving the inspectors and their superiors some uncompromising words in dark corners. So Lancelot got into the car and slid in beside Guin. After a moment, she let herself lean onto his shoulder so their respective exhales of smoke started to mingle together.

“You came after me,” she said, tone confused and questioning.

“You are listed on the license as my partner, even if your name isn’t on the door. Which was your decision, by the way.” Conversations like this always made Lancelot extremely uncomfortable, due to their usually leading up to a demand for some kind of vow. And he hated making vows. They were never worded to cover all situations and of course, the one situation requiring that he break them, however temporarily, almost always came up. If it were up to him, he’d just let the kind of feeling behind the vow hang in the air. Like smoke. It was there, it hung around, and it could shape itself into anything.

That was one reason he liked—okay, he did like her, despite all the name-calling—Guin. She seemed to get that.

Right now, she was looking up at him and smiling, like she knew something he didn’t. It unwound a few of the knots inside Lancelot, since that meant she was recovering. “You know, Lancelot? You’re not so much of a bastard as you want everyone to think.”

“Whatever you say, Guin. Personally, I don’t think we’d work nearly as well together if I wasn’t a bastard, and you weren’t a bitch.” He blew a long stream of gray at the windshield and watched it curl back on him. “We do work well together. When you fucking answer the phone and don’t go off on your own.”

“As if you don’t,” she snorted, finishing off her cigarette and tapping the ash out the window on her side. Then she handed him the butt, which he put out on his shoe-heel and tossed out the door. “You fucked him, didn’t you?”

Lancelot winced, then checked her face. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem to be jealous…well, not nearly as much as she should have been. And shit, he was going to have come up with an edited version of the cemetery fight when they got each other caught up on what they’d been doing. Arthur wasn’t even physically around, and he was still dumping complications into Lancelot’s life. “We didn’t get to fucking. Messed around a little.”

She snickered and leaned up to peck the corner of his reluctant grin, then resettled her head on his shoulder. When she spoke again, a few minutes later, she had turned strangely serious. “You shouldn’t mess with him. I…either it’s all or nothing. So says my womanly intuition.”

“Actually, my manly intuition agrees with you,” Lancelot confessed, voice slouching down with the rest of him. He drew one last drag before sending his cigarette the way of Guin’s. Then a thought flashed at him, and he craned his head to look her in the eye. “Which would you do?”

Guin raised her eyebrows. But he pointedly kept staring at her, which eventually made her duck her face into his chest. “If you must know…all. I have a…feeling.”

“Which are exceptionally dangerous things. Plus that’d involve sharing, and neither of us do that well.” Peripheral vision showed Arthur finally emerging from the boardinghouse, looking tired and resigned and almost bitter. It couldn’t be easy, watching one’s family end in a sordid mess like this. And fuck, but Lancelot still couldn’t get away from the thought of so many years. It was like a sore he couldn’t help prodding, morbidly wanting to see himself twitch.

“You’re terrible at talking yourself into or out of anything, Lancelot. Stick to what you know and just do.” Her eyes were fluttering shut, and her words were stretching sluggish and slurred.

Unwounded or not, she’d clearly had a hellish night. So Lancelot let her get away with the cop-out…for the moment. “But you’re going to have a lot of talking to do yourself when you wake up,” he grumbled, pulling her onto his lap so they’d both fit in the seat.

When Arthur got in, he seemed to be preoccupied with other thoughts and barely glanced at Lancelot and Guin. But then he stopped, hand on the door, and gave them a long, surprised stare.

“And how are our friendly law enforcement officers?” Lancelot queried, trying to snap the other man out of it.

Arthur startled, then pulled the door shut and started the car. His jaw had a grim line to it, and the way it silhouetted against the gray day at that moment did more than anything to finally convince Lancelot that his story was true. The man would’ve looked perfectly at home on a muddy battlefield, sword in hand and blood on his face.

That image was oddly vivid for Lancelot. He must have been watching too many sword-and-slash film epics.

“I told them the story you came up with and they’re using it. Some of them aren’t happy, but…the Pendragon name has some political capital that hasn’t yet been used up. And Ambrose still is one, even if he was thrown out.” They pulled out into the road just as the clouds ripped open to birth a vicious downpour. Peering through it, Arthur carefully maneuvered around the many police cars now clustered about the boardinghouse. The neighborhood was going to be whispering about this day for years and years to come—a modern-day legend, only without the polish of the old tales.

Lancelot happened to know the truth behind one of those. Now he had to figure out what the hell to do about it before any more disasters got dropped on his doorstep.


	5. Closing the Books

When they arrived at the hotel, Arthur showed them to a different room, which had a much larger bedchamber. Nevertheless, the number of beds were still one less than the number of people, which might have amused the hell out of a “sleeping” Guin, but which merely exacerbated Lancelot’s discomfort. He set Guin down on the nearest one and then got the hell out of there, making the excuse that he was going to grab a fresh pack of cigarettes from the lobby.

It wasn’t a complete lie. His holder did only have two left, and Lancelot did stop to get it refilled. But the real point of coming downstairs was to stand by a window and watch the rain splatter against the glass in a perfect echo of his thoughts. Pieces were falling in place, one by one, and while he still couldn’t see what the final shape of the conclusion was going to be, he could see enough of the shadow to want to close his eyes.

Arthur had scars, but had apparently stopped getting them after he found out he could resurrect. Guin had been covered in blood and visibly terrified; it took a hell of a lot to do that to her, but whatever it had been hadn’t left a mark on her. And like Arthur, Guin had to have Welsh blood. Among his many eccentricities, Merlin had a rabid nationalistic streak that was probably going to put back the cause of Wales several years. He and Guin never would’ve have a relationship from which to fall if she didn’t have that background.

Not to mention that one of Britain’s greatest legends had a bit more than a basis in fact.

“Goddamn names.” There was a frail little side-table by Lancelot’s hip, which probably cost a fortune and which would only take a minute to smash. He considered it for a long second before smashing the end of his cigarette into the ash tray the table had and going back upstairs. By that time, night had started to fall and there was no way in hell his excuse would hold up, but he didn’t give a damn.

The main room of the suite was empty, but Lancelot could hear low voices murmuring in the bedroom: Guin had woken up. He padded closer, and had just identified the words as Welsh—Arthur’s kind—when the other man swung open the door. Lancelot jumped, flushed and steadied himself. It was a pointed reminder that despite the camouflage Arthur currently inhabited, the man had survived far too long to be easily dismissed.

“Did you find your brand?” Arthur asked. Too damned considerate, no matter what the circumstances.

“Yeah.” Lancelot gritted his teeth and jerked his feet till he was inside the room.

Guin had also showered and changed into a silky robe, but she wasn’t playing up the sex-kitten factor. In fact, she looked a bit like a frightened little girl the way she was wrapped into the blankets, with only the shotglass of whiskey in her hand to dispel that image. But no amount of window-dressing could disguise the new degree of wariness in her eyes. Sometimes Lancelot could get her to admit she’d underestimated him, but he’d never before seen her watching him like she couldn’t meet him halfway.

Behind him, a soft click signaled the door shutting. He turned around to see that this time, Arthur had made his exit. “That man is entirely too polite.”

“He’s careful,” Guin corrected, pulling up her knees to her chest. She drained the remains of her whiskey, then stared at the half-melted ice in the glass. “More than he used to be.”

“I’d like to think that you’re referring to meeting him before. Say, at a society ball.” None of the chairs were in a great position, so Lancelot shucked his coat and threw it over the nearest. Then he dragged it to the side of the bed and sat down, propping his elbows on his knees. “What the hell are you, anyway? Illegitimate daughter of some lord?”

That got him an eye-roll and a cutting laugh, which was more like her. But the laugh trailed off into lip-chewing and fiddling with her glass. Guin flicked out her next words like she was scraping shit from her tongue. “Not quite. I’m Merlin’s niece.”

If she’d told him that four days ago, he would’ve thrown a fit and she would’ve yelled back, and it probably would’ve ended in a month of mutual cold-shouldering. But Lancelot had been through so much already that this revelation just seemed natural. “Oh, great.”

“He’s higher-born than a lot of people think.” She favored the shotglass with a sardonic smile. “Than they want to. He married me to a local smuggler he needed as an ally. At first, I was devoted and did as I was told in the name of Merlin’s cause, but my bastard of a husband was a violent drunk. So one night I ran him over. Which Merlin didn’t like.”

“I’m not sure which family is more insane—yours or Arthur’s,” Lancelot mumbled, rubbing at the side of his face. His bruises were starting to hurt again, and his stomach seemed determined to shrivel in on itself.

To be fair, Guin didn’t look much better even though she didn’t have any physical injuries. The skin under her eyes was drawn and waxen and swelling with shadows, and she kept drifting off into some memory. Then something would snap her back and her breath would do a little hitch, whereupon she would stare at Lancelot like she’d never seen him before.

“About Arthur…” she started.

“Merlin’s niece…so you were born now. I mean, not now, but in this century, anyway.” All of the constant shifts and new discoveries must have been grinding down harder on Lancelot than he’d thought, because his mind seemed to be working very slow the past few hours. After a second, he reached out and took the glass from Guin, then shoved it against his temple. That helped a hell of a lot. “But…what happened back there? Just tell me straight.”

He could tell there was a protest banging against her teeth, but Guin pressed her lips thin and kept it in. Though she put finger-combing her hair and teasing a few waves to lie sweetly on her shoulders before talking. It figured that her way of bracing up was to make herself look pretty.

“I tracked down Ambrose—I take it you know how. When I got there, he was out, so I looked for the sword. He came back before I realized and…well, I took his eye. He’ll have problems having more children, too.” Her finger twitched into a sharp hook-claw-twist, then curled back with the others on top of the blankets. She lifted her chin so he could see a trace of eerie satisfaction go through her eyes, then looked back at him. “Some of that blood was his. But the rest was mine—he doesn’t know how to use that sword. Not properly.”

“What would you know about swordplay?” As soon as Lancelot asked that question, he could feel the world start to quietly unravel around him. Although he didn’t know exactly what she was going to say, he knew that it was going to fuck around with his head just like everything else.

She knew it, too. And she did look sorry, but in an annoyed, slightly condescending way, like he wasn’t keeping pace with her. Well, Guin was back and fuck her for it, because Lancelot was doing the best he could with the little scraps of information he got.

“I’m Guinevere. The real one. I was Arthur’s wife, and the Pendragons are descended from our son. I died back there and remembered when I came back.” Just like Arthur, she got it all out without even blinking, let alone showing any expression. When Lancelot thought about it later, he figured that that had been the deciding factor for making him believe her.

But at the time, it was another hack at his sanity that he couldn’t immediately absorb. He retreated into the safer territory of briefly filling in Guin about his side of the investigation, and then he excused himself to go have another smoke.

* * *

The balcony was a nice one. Wide, long, with only a potted plant in the corner so Lancelot didn’t run the danger of tripping over anything while he was pacing. It was also on a high enough floor that he could tap off the ash of his cigarette over the railing without anyone noticing. Maybe a few people down below wondered why there were gray snowflakes falling, but it was London, after all. Filthy city.

Even up here, the puddles of water left over from the earlier shower looked dingy and off-color, for all that they were lying on expensive Italian tiling. And they were fucking slippery—

\--a hand grabbed Lancelot’s arm and pulled him back on his feet. Then Arthur stepped the rest of the way through the door and came to stand next to Lancelot, who angrily shrugged off the other man’s hand. He didn’t have to look to know that more or less slapped Arthur across the face, and he didn’t have to think about why that would bring to life even the ghost of regret in himself. He could just stand here, smoke like the irritated, confused son of a bitch he was and try to outthink a wounded and crazed man with a fifth-century A. D. broadsword. Work was about the only thing that was still making any kind of sense, and Lancelot was going to get that taken care of, closed and taped if it was the only thing he did. He had a reputation as London’s top private investigator to maintain, after all.

“Are you all right?” Arthur asked, softly like someone might overhear.

“Why the hell are you asking me that? Shouldn’t you be having a happy reunion with your wife?” The naked jealousy in Lancelot’s voice made him want to cringe, because of all the worries he had, that should’ve been the least important. Except…goddamn it, he never knew when to leave well enough alone. Always had to stick his head all the way in.

That prompted a short laugh from him, but he sounded hollow and bitter, and it didn’t do a damn thing to help his disgusted feeling.

“Guinevere and I have already talked.” Curiously enough, the other man didn’t seem all that excited about having his wife finally recognize him. And, apparently, get a share of whatever exemption deal Arthur had with death. It looked like the deep love the legend versions of them had wasn’t the reality.

Either that or Arthur was happy, but was too busy worrying about something else to show it. Like how Lancelot was taking the introduction of not only immortality, but…but fucking reincarnation as well. Because Guin—or her body, anyway—was definitely not fifteen hundred years old. “Yeah? Good for you.”

“I told her you already knew about me.” Arthur shuffled his feet, struggling to say something that would make a decent segue into conversation. As opposed to what they were currently doing, which was standing two inches apart and taking turns spitting lame little statements into the freezing air. “The story is nothing like what it was like.”

“I can imagine.” Lancelot dug into his pocket for another cigarette, but in keeping with the tone of the previous couple of days, he’d left them inside. He did have his lighter with him, so he managed to burn a few seconds of strained silence by flicking the flame on and off. “We’ve still got people who marry for reasons that have nothing to do with love, or even a good screw now and then.”

The other man made a sound like the mongrel bastard of a sigh and a growl; so there was a limit to Arthur’s patience, after all. And Lancelot had been beginning to think that unnaturally long lifespans came with free saint complexes as well. “I did—do love Guinevere. But the circumstances of our marriage didn’t allow us to really grow comfortable around each other. We cared for each other, but we both had…prior loyalties that put up barriers. And she died only a few years—childbirth was much more dangerous then.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Which was genuine, because Lancelot was sneaking glances at Arthur and could see that even after so long, that event was still a sore point with the other man. With everything that had happened, Lancelot still couldn’t disentangle himself from Arthur—hell, he couldn’t even figure out how he’d gotten tied into the other man in the first place. 

When he’d been younger and stupid—all right, more stupid—there had been a small hill near where he’d lived, and a road running over it. The road had been graded into a slope so perfect that anyone going down it for the first time assumed it was the nice, gentle descent it appeared. Halfway, once the acceleration really started to pick up, they’d realize the truth and slam on the brakes, but by then it was usually too late. Lancelot had lost count of how many accidents he’d seen on that one little stretch of road.

This case was exactly like that, with one slight difference. He wasn’t certain he wanted brakes.

Eventually he stopped playing with the lighter and put that away, then turned to look Arthur in the eye. “What’s your real name? Your first one?”

“Artorius Castus,” Arthur answered, expression curious and wary at the same time. “The Wo—Britons changed it to Arthur. My mother was British, but my father was a foreign mercenary for the Romans.”

“You stuck with the same name.” Either that crack about his family’s lack of imagination was actually the truth, or Arthur was just extremely devoted to certain aspects of his life.

But the other man shook his head and tucked his hands in his pockets, staring off to the side. That faint air of broken disappointment was gracing his face again. “Not for the whole time. Before now, I actually hadn’t used ‘Arthur’ in a long time. It’s not all that pleasant, hearing stories glorifying the wrong parts and dropping or distorting the right ones.”

“Well, no one ever said legends were supposed to be front-page exposés. You tell people the truth, they just try to kill you.” If he had to, Lancelot could back up that claim with firsthand experiences. “Arthur? Who the hell did I fuck last night? You or the story?”

“Me,” the other man promptly said, startled and puzzled.

Nodding, Lancelot stretched out his arms till the cramps in them popped away, each one a brief bubble of pain. But afterward, his muscles were relaxed and relatively less sore. “And who did you fuck? Me, or someone I remind you of?”

This time, Arthur didn’t answer so quickly. Good for him, because if he’d had a reply to a question like that ready on the tip of his tongue, Lancelot would have written him off then and there.

“Whoever I met three days ago in your office.” Deprecating suited Arthur slightly better than depressed, but both expressions still nagged at Lancelot. “I won’t say I’ve been faithful while Guinevere was dead, but I do usually take much longer to get to know someone. I don’t even know how you like your coffee.”

“One lash of cream, three sugars.” Lancelot stared at the second button on Arthur’s shirt and repeated to himself all the usual reasons why screwing clients was a bad idea, then added on the fact that he’d die on Arthur. And that his life expectancy wasn’t even looking to be a full one, given that Ambrose was running free around London, and that…Merlin had been very quiet, attempted arson at Galahad’s auction house aside. Too fucking quiet.

After about a minute, he was staring at his hands, which had come up to hold onto Arthur’s collar. And then he wasn’t staring at all because his eyes were closed and he was kissing Arthur like all he wanted to do was stand there and keep breathing with the other man. Which wasn’t too far off the mark, in fact.

Neither of them, however, were idiots, so they went inside. Arthur pulled the curtains across the balcony door while Lancelot was pulling the man’s shirt-tails out of his trousers, and then he backed Lancelot up against the wall.

There was a heavy brass fixture about four inches left and two inches above Lancelot’s head. When that first fraction of prick stretch-burned inside him, his flailing hand knocked against the lamp, then wrapped around it. His other hand was pressing its bandages into the sweat starting to leak from Arthur’s hairline, fingers curled about the back of Arthur’s neck so that every time a thrust rocked him up the wall, he could pull Arthur after him. Slide back down into a ragged kiss, lips mismatching and teeth ripping open day-old little scabs.

It hurt. His scrapes seared every time the friction of their bodies rubbed stinging saltwater into them. His insides hadn’t felt this in a hell of a long time, and they were squeezing raw everything he felt, whether it was painful or not. The bruises under his chin got nipped a few times by accident, but then Arthur was licking a smooth, soft apology all over them. That got trailed to Lancelot’s neck, which was completely open to the other man because Lancelot had his eyes turned upwards so the sweat wouldn’t run into his eyes. He assumed it was sweat, anyway. There wasn’t any time or energy to spare to tell the difference.

Not that Arthur got off easy. The man wasn’t going to wake up with dark reddish to purple marks all over him in the morning, and that irked Lancelot into being a lot rougher than normal. His nails let tracks crisscrossing Arthur’s back, as if he could add anything to the scarring already there, and his knees and elbows and heels of hands hit at Arthur, urging the man on whenever he slowed, till blue-black started to rise beneath Arthur’s skin.

But in the end, Lancelot had to wrap himself around the other man and just press and hold till the shaking was over, till he not only thought he could stand on his own, but thought that he could make himself do it.

* * *

The shower was off the bedroom. Guin was a dark lump on the bed, but Lancelot knew better than to just take her at face value. The only reason he didn’t say anything was because he wanted to see how Arthur would act.

Arthur didn’t say anything, either. Hair still damp, he sat down on the edge of the bed and tentatively put a hand on the curve that was Guin’s hip, then leaned over and murmured something Lancelot couldn’t hear. Even if he’d been able to, he had a feeling it wouldn’t have been in a language he understood.

He’d counted to five when Guin turned over and put out an arm, drawing Arthur down to the bed. When he’d reached fifteen, Lancelot gave up on pretending that standing around and gawking could constitute composure and came over himself. Then he slowly allowed himself to be curled against Arthur’s front. God knew how it was supposed to work out, but for the moment, he didn’t feel up to asking any pointed questions about it.

* * *

According to the clock on the bedside table, two hours had passed when Lancelot jerked awake. He instantly put a hand to Arthur’s arm, but the other man was still asleep. Good thing, because a second later the phone emitted a fraction of a shrill and Lancelot snatched it up.

Guin’s eyes opened and she raised her head, but Arthur’s eyes remained closed and his breathing even. Slightly relieved, Lancelot carefully wormed out of the other man’s arms and off the bed so he could kneel on the floor. “Hello?”

*Lancelot? Tristan. Dagonet rang up five minutes ago. He said Ambrose just went through the Dragon’s Mouth into Whitechapel, Excalibur under his arm for everyone to see, and no one stopped him. I’m waiting outside the alley.*

“Shit.” Lancelot kept the rest of his cursing in his head and dragged his trousers off the chair. He snaked them on as quietly as he could, then looked at Guin. “Ambrose. Merlin. Meeting,” he mouthed.

She sat up fast, but like him, made certain not to disturb Arthur. “Are they making a deal?” she whispered.

“Tristan, thanks. I’ll be down there in twenty minutes. Try and get anyone that’s awake.” Then Lancelot gingerly set the phone down and came over to Guin’s side of the bed while he buttoned his shirt and vest. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

Guin caught her lower lip between her teeth, but didn’t chew it because some conclusion came together in her eyes before that old habit could kick in. While she was busy whipping it into shape, Lancelot buckled on his shoulder-holster and slid on his coat. He couldn’t remember where his hat had been and there wasn’t time to look, so he just wrote it off. It could keep his lost tie company in Arthur’s hotel room…and he should tack on those to the bill. God knew he’d ruined more pieces of clothing on this job than on any other he’d had in a while.

“Ambrose thinks the sword should do it, but he didn’t. So maybe he thinks he didn’t do something right, and maybe Merlin let it be known that he alone has the secret to how to make it work. That would be like him,” she finally suggested, though her tone of voice made it obvious she thought that was the correct theory.

Frankly, Lancelot did as well. It sounded like human nature to him. “All right. I’m going and I’m settling this.”

“What about…” She threw a pointed look over her shoulder. Just then, Arthur stirred and they both froze, but the other man resettled himself and resumed his slow, steady breathing.

Good question. It put Lancelot back on his heels for a moment, which he absently used to check how many bullets he still had left. Not many, but Tristan should have some, and if Gawain came in Lancelot’s car, there would be the shotgun.

Watching Arthur being shot was arguably when it all shifted to uncontrolled freefall, but of all the memorable moments of this case, that one wasn’t one Lancelot had thought on very which. In fact, it could be said that he’d avoided thinking about it by concentrating on what it’d consequently revealed. Because he had believed Arthur dead and even though they’d barely known each other, Lancelot had felt the world wash away.

He now knew the other man would survive, but maybe Lancelot still didn’t feel easy about trusting in that. And maybe it was a little too late, but he wanted to keep the facets of Arthur the client and Arthur the…Arthur separate. Things were so snarled in each other that if Lancelot didn’t start unraveling a few threads, he was never going to be free of uncertainty—not knowing what was responsible for what.

“Be around when he wakes up, all right?” Lancelot petted Guin’s hair, which was loose and mussed in a fine silky veil that, at this moment, looked far more attractive than she had ever had when every single hair was gelled in place. Then he grinned and pecked her on the forehead, because it was ever-so-slightly condescending and he knew it would annoy her as much as it…well, touched her. Guin wasn’t quite as cold as she let on.

She also wasn’t about to let him go without a better answer than that; Guin snatched his wrist and tugged him back. “What are you doing? Are you—he loves you.”

He pretended he hadn’t heard the second half and addressed the first. “I’m wrapping things up. I’ve had enough. And…from the sound of things, he’s had more than. Let him sleep.”

“I never knew you had an altruistic side,” Guin snorted. Her fingers loosened a little, but not enough for him to pull away.

“I don’t. Believe me, this is entirely for my own reasons.” A glance at the clock told Lancelot he was going to have to floor it once he got to the car. Shit. “You were his wife? Well, you’re my fucking partner, too. So act like it. Let go.”

Guin narrowed her eyes and swept her gaze through all his layers, deeper than he’d ever let her look before. And when she was done, she let go. He might have glimpsed wet silver gleaming beneath her lashes, but it was Guin, so he doubted it.

* * *

Thanks to some short-cuts, Lancelot made to the Dragon’s Mouth with half a minute to spare. There he found Tristan and Gawain, who tossed him his shotgun, and a sullen-looking Galahad. And, to his surprise, Dag shadowing Vivien, while beside them, Bors let out a gargantuan belch.

Gawain sighed and spread out his hands palms-up, indicating his surrender to the nonsensicalness of it all. “Turns out Dag’s been bringing Vivien meals the past few days. She’s the one that actually saw Ambrose go in.”

“Well, well. Crime makes strange bedfellows,” Lancelot wryly remarked, shouldering the shotgun. He peeked into the alley, which to his surprise was completely deserted.

“Merlin’s had everyone gathered for the show,” Vivien murmured, wrapping what looked like Dag’s coat more tightly around herself. Sometime between the last time he’d seen her and now, she’d also gotten herself a shower and a haircut, so now she looked less like a harmless crazed lady and more like a dangerous crazed one. “And it’s war.”

Lancelot rolled his eyes and started off towards the heart of Whitechapel. “Same thing, only on different scales. All right, the sword is mine. Ambrose is dead one way or the other, and so’s Merlin. Everyone stay out of it unless they have to, and guard the outside while I go in. Vivien, show where to, but you get in my way and I might forget I’m supposed to be nice to women.”

As they crossed the invisible threshold that marked the border, Gawain caught up with Lancelot, looking worried. “How’s Guin?”

“Fine. She’s taking the night off. Needs her beauty sleep, you know.” In agreement with what Vivien had said, the streets of Whitechapel were strangely deserted, considering the place did the vast majority of its business between dusk and dawn.

The other man had to jog a bit to keep pace with Lancelot. His expression still had something chewing at its ankle. “I thought your usual M. O. was to make an arrest.”

“Yeah, well, I suppose you could say this has gotten too personal. Hell, you could even call it my swan song, except I’m not planning on dying.” Just taking, at the very least, a long break from work afterwards, because Lancelot had a lot of other things to figure out. Not to mention that whatever Arthur’s motives had been, he’d still fucked up Lancelot for the kind of cool detachment investigatory work required.

Oddly enough, Lancelot wasn’t too angry about that. But then, he wasn’t in the proper state of mind for making judgments.

Vivien led them to an old Victorian tenement with windows blazing and many, many shapes moving behind the windows. According to her, there was a sizable vacant lot behind, and that was where Merlin had called everyone. He was going to speak from one of the narrow iron balconies.

Tristan peeled off before they even saw the building, but he knew what he was doing, even if no one else did. After a second, Gawain waved Galahad over and they both followed. Bors took up a post outside the main door in case one of their two targets fled that way, while Dag settled himself at the side. He gave Vivien a long, thoughtful look as she ushered Lancelot away to a back entrance.

“Looks like you have an admirer,” Lancelot muttered. The back door turned out to be a skeleton staircase barely wide enough for them to squeeze through, and as it was, the sharp iron rails ripped his coat a few times. There went another suit.

“No. He only understands that what needs to be done needs to be done.” She shot him a smile that was sharper than the rails. “When you know that, then you know how to wait.”

He rolled his eyes, but refrained from replying because now they were inside and he could hear footsteps moving around nearby.

For once, Vivien was useful without Lancelot having to prod and cajole her into it. She took him by the arm, hawk-grip digging broken nails through his sleeve, and tugged him from shadow to shadow, quickly leading him deep into the building without a single person seeing them.

They finally stopped on the fifth floor in a sepia-stained hallway that stank of vomit and rot. Some dog had whelped in the corner and no one had bothered to clean up the afterbirth, which by now had grown green and pus-filled and thoroughly disgusting. He quickly turned away, but Vivien spent a damnably long moment staring at the putrid thing.

“I told him,” she whispered, the way a snake might. “He’s old. He forgets what he’s learned and believes he can change everything. But it’s all moved past him now, ahead of him. The world isn’t his.”

“Damned right. So where…” Lancelot stopped and cocked his head, straining to hear. Someone was screaming. A man, in terrible pain. And it didn’t sound all too different from when Ambrose had been screaming over his son’s grave. “Ah. That way…”

Vivien had disappeared. Fucking women. But at least he’d been aware enough to notice that all the floors were laid out in the same pattern, so he’d be able to get out on his own afterward. Suppressing his frustration, Lancelot cocked the shotgun and silently walked toward the muffled groans.

* * *

For the second it took Lancelot’s eyes to adjust to the gore, he felt sorry for Ambrose. But then he remembered what Guin had been careful not to say, though her hands still hadn’t lost their tremble, and he crossed the man off his sympathy list. Looked like Merlin had been horrific to Ambrose, but no one could say the man didn’t walk into it of his own free will.

The other man was chained down to the metal skeleton of a bedframe and stripped to the waist. Deep cuts wrote weird symbols into his skin and dripped blood onto the floor, so they resembled drooling red mouths. For the moment, it looked like they’d stopped whatever the hell they’d been doing.

Correction: that he’d stopped. Because only one other man was in the room. He was about an inch taller than Lancelot, with a burly build and eerie blue tattoos stretching from his hands up his arms and down his back. His beard and hair were matted red, and it looked as if he’d been fingerpainting his face with Ambrose’s blood as well. It had to be Merlin.

He was currently squatting on the floor, hunched over a bowl of water into which he was flicking droplets of blood from his fingers. And something long and silvery was lying beside him, but Lancelot couldn’t see more than that because the door was in the way.

A quick glance down the hall showed that so far, no one else was around. Maybe someone was in the bathroom inside the room, but with these cramped apartments, there couldn’t be that many people. Lancelot took a deep, soundless breath, and then banged open the door with the shotgun, which he leveled unhesitatingly at Merlin’s heart.

Contrary to expectations, the other man didn’t even flinch. That worried Lancelot, but what really turned his blood cold was how Merlin slowly pivoted an unblinking, unfocused gaze on him. Seeing that kind of look from Vivien was bad enough, and she wasn’t dangerous to him. Whereas Merlin…

…was speaking. “You’ve come for the sword.”

“Yeah.” Very slowly, Lancelot crouched down and walked his free fingers across the floor to the sword hilt. As creepy as it was, he didn’t take his eyes from Merlin’s stone stare as he curled his hand around the handle. “Sorry. Nothing personal; just business.”

“You’re stealing the nation of Britain and you don’t believe it’s personal?” Merlin suddenly jerked up and Lancelot froze, snapping the trigger almost all the way back. It would’ve been grand to kill the fuck right here, but the shot would bring too many of the man’s minions running.

Ambrose appeared to have passed out. One thing in Lancelot’s favor, since it meant that his already-raw nerves weren’t rasped any more by the man’s groaning.

He didn’t bother answering Merlin’s question because it sounded like the rhetoric the cornerstone firebreathers used. Instead, Lancelot quietly lifted the sword off the ground and started to edge out of the door.

“That sword protects this land,” Merlin went on, rocking back on his heels. He’d downshifted his tone from righteous to pedantic, lecturing like some old crank in university robes, and for a few moments, it looked like he was going to sink too far into his insanity to stop Lancelot. “It is the symbol of kingship, which was supposedly lost to the waters, hence our presumed supremacy at sea. But in truth, it was never thrown to the lake. And it still rules over the land.”

All that property Arthur had mentioned, Lancelot recalled. Maybe that was Merlin’s crazed way of referring to it; God knew the Welsh basketcase was always maneuvering to expand his territory.

And said basketcase suddenly slammed his palms down against the floor, creating a huge hollow boom. “Usurper!”

Over the dying echoes of the noise, Lancelot heard footsteps just in time. He whirled about to see someone drawing a bead on him at the end of the hall. Got the shotgun up in time to blow off his head, but he had to drop Excalibur to do it. Something blurry blue and dark brown rammed out of the room and into his leg, sending him sideways against the wall.

Goddamn it, Merlin was fast for an old bastard. He also had the sword now, and was swinging it in direct line for Lancelot’s neck.

Lancelot brought the shotgun up and just parried it, wincing as the sparks struck by the two weapons showered into his face. Then he tried to duck past the other man, like he’d done with Ambrose, but unlike that son of a bitch, Merlin actually knew how to use a broadsword. And he was hammering down on Lancelot too fast and too hard for Lancelot to have the time or space to shoot him.

“It’s not yours to take!” The sword whined and came down into the floor, just a second from slicing off Lancelot’s foot.

“And it’s not your sword, either.” That over-strong swing gave Lancelot a moment’s window to step up and whack Merlin in the face with the shotgun butt. So he did, and the other man stumbled back but didn’t fall. It figured that the most insane would also be the toughest. “Look, if you’re after the property, they sure as hell aren’t going to turn it over to a nutcase like you. You aren’t even of the right family. And if it’s some kind of sick magic, then that won’t work, either.”

Merlin’s eyebrows jumped and wriggled like he was trying to bespell Lancelot with those alone. Notably enough, he didn’t rely only on that to knock away the shotgun when Lancelot tried to raise it again. “You don’t know anything.”

Well, fine. If he had to, Lancelot could shoot the bastard to death by pieces. Not that he was one for torture, but Merlin was getting him fucking riled, and he couldn’t see any other way to slow the man down. So he pulled the trigger and sent a double load of shot into Merlin’s left knee and thigh.

The other man screamed like a wildcat and fell against the wall, sword clattering from his hand. Lancelot wasn’t carrying any extra shot for the shotgun, so he tossed it aside and drew his pistol, leveling it at Merlin. Then he bent down and reached for the sword. “Maybe I don’t know as much as everyone, but I know people. That’s better than most.”

His fingers had just touched the hilt when an ear-shattering cacophony started up in the room. And then, to top off the impossibilities that had been mounting up in Lancelot’s life, Ambrose swung out of the doorway with broken handcuff chains dangling and a mad-dog glare in his eyes. “That’s mine!”

“Fuck—” At the last moment, Lancelot whipped about to shoot Ambrose instead of Merlin, but by then the other man had picked up too much speed rushing down the hall. And the window was only a foot away from Lancelot.

White-hot pain sliced through Lancelot’s back, but only for a moment because after that, he was freefalling. It was night now, and as usual, the sky was so clouded that there wasn’t even a hint of starlight.

“Lancelot!”

Arthur was calling.

So was the grou—

* * *

Thank fucking God Ambrose landed on a nearby car instead of on top of Lancelot, because that would’ve made things even worse. As it was, it was nastier than any migraine or hang-over he’d ever had.

He took a moment to just lie there on the hard concrete sidewalk and the glass shards, staring upwards and recalling. Rearranging a few things in his mind. Then he slowly rolled to his feet—sparked a hell of a lot of pain—and, yanking out glass bits from his back, walked over to the car. 

Ambrose was still twitching. From the looks of things, he’d broken his back so that wasn’t going to last much longer. He was mouthing two names over and over: one was Elaine, and the other was a boy’s name.

The son of a bitch had hacked Guin to death, so it was a real shame to waste a bullet on him, but Lancelot could only manage one step before he had to turn back. With a sigh, he cocked his gun—which somehow was still in his hand—and shot the other man in the temple. Then he took off for the tenement stairs, first at a fast walk and then at a dead run. Once he was on the stairs, he leaped them in twos and threes, then skidded back into that fifth-floor hallway as fast as he could.

It hadn’t been more than a few minutes. Merlin was still leaning against the wall, though he’d pushed himself up by using Excalibur as a cane. Guin was holding a pistol on him, eyes raging behind a surprisingly thick veil of tears, and Arthur was standing beside her. His hair was disheveled, his clothes haphazardly thrown on, and his face had completely drained of any blood. Not to mention any feeling. “Give me the sword,” Arthur whispered, stepping forward.

Startled, Guin gave him a worried look, but she didn’t stop him.

Come to think of it, Merlin was finally looking like he wanted to shit in his pants. His fingers convulsed tighter on Excalibur, then started to loosen.

“Give. Me. The. Sword.” Arthur looked like he was ready to kill with his bare hands.

For the first time, Merlin breathed loud enough for Lancelot to hear him. “I need it more than you do. I need it to preserve my work. I need what it means.”

“It doesn’t mean anything! It’s only a sword!” Arthur snarled.

Something audibly snapped. Lancelot knew very well how never having anyone listen would irritate the hell out of a man, but that still didn’t make lunging at a man with a sword any more sensible. Swearing in a few more languages than before, he dove for Arthur.

But someone else got there first: Vivien, coming out of nowhere just in time to have the tip of Excalibur sink an inch into her breast. Everyone froze—and even Merlin looked horrified, for some reason.

Except for Vivien, who was disturbingly satisfied. While her former lover watched her, transfixed like a mouse before a cat, she grabbed the blade and heaved herself till the sword tip came out her back. Then she slumped onto Merlin, who awkwardly put out an arm to support her. “I told you. I’d follow you forever for what you did to Morgan. And you’ll die, and you’ll stay with _me_.”

Her lips curled back in a wide, wide smile that let the blood bubble freely from her mouth, and her head slowly tilted back. With an oath, Merlin dropped her and threw himself backwards. But her hand was still clutched around his wrist, so that the dead weight of her body brought him to the ground.

Arthur didn’t hesitate. In one smooth motion, he yanked Excalibur out of Vivien’s chest and whirled it up, then brought it down on Merlin’s neck. The onetime ruler of Whitechapel’s head rolled a little way down the hall before coming to rest by the rotting dog’s placenta.

And then the other man seemed to collapse, going to his knees with head bowed. His shoulders gave two ragged heaves. “My God, why did I bother, if it was only going to happen again?”

* * *

Two lifetimes jumbled together in Lancelot’s head, then interleaved into each other. Not easily, and not gently, but they settled down enough for him to think. “Why the hell did you?”

The other man whipped around to show eyes that wanted to swallow the world. Beside him, Guin lowered her gun and took an uncertain step forward before stopping. Well, it was weird.

“You and I actually get along this time round,” Lancelot muttered, gesturing between her and him. He walked up till he was less than a yard from them and halted, shoving his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them. Everything had turned upside-down and shaken him hard, and he still hadn’t recovered enough to figure out what he was supposed to hold on to.

“We…do. I think that shocked me almost as badly as dying.” After a moment, Guin put away the gun altogether and laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, pulling him up.

Lancelot blinked. “I’m not speaking in English. Well, now I am, but a moment ago…God, this hurts my head. What the hell…how did…”

Amusingly enough, she actually looked a little embarrassed. Then her composure clicked back down and Guin shrugged, holding up her hands. She flexed the fingers and curled them the way she would if she were using a bow. “He was still mourning you when I died—back then. I thought after I went, he might not be able to…so I told him to wait for us. To take care of my son. Though this outcome wasn’t exactly what I was expecting…”

“You. Told him. And somehow, that worked?” It was nice to know his skepticism was a constant factor in his life.

“It wasn’t the same world,” Arthur said, dropping his gaze from Lancelot to the sword he still held. He took out a handkerchief and absently began wiping off the blood, and that little gesture nearly pulled the carpet out from under Lancelot because he could _remember_. It really, really fucking hurt. “People believed differently. Not like now, where even the strongest belief can be questioned. Then, a belief was truth. Magic could be real.”

Which part of Lancelot agreed with, no problem, but he wasn’t going to let things go that easily. “And what about right now? Me and Guin?”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to know.” The other man snapped his eyes up to burn shivers into Lancelot, while he lowered his arm so Excalibur hung loosely at his side. “That was then. This is now, where I’m only a man and not a king, and this is only a sword, though it’s still a sharp one.”

“Only an idiot,” Lancelot muttered, shuffling the rest of the way. He couldn’t look Arthur directly in the eye because of the brightness there, so he watched Arthur’s feet. One last burst of aggravation fisted his hands in Arthur’s shirt, and Lancelot gave him a shake. “Fifteen hundred years, just because Guin promised you…oh, my God. Arthur. You…you…”

Then he had to stop talking, because if he kept on like he was, he was going to seriously embarrass himself. Arthur let him. The jackass—Lancelot reared back and dragged the man down into as long a kiss as he could manage.

* * *

It was freezing and foggy, and Lancelot didn’t really understand why he and Guin were on this damned bridge, pretending that smoking was enough to keep them warm and waiting for Arthur. He stamped his feet and flipped up his collar, then cursed those for useless efforts. No matter what he did, the wind managed to sneak in somewhere.

“Stop that. It’s only a few minutes longer.” Guin could talk, since she had herself a nice shelter, tucked away as she was behind a pillar.

“So you say.” He shot her a nasty look, then stepped back and started to worm himself in next to her. Of course, she didn’t let that go without a few smacks, but she was wearing thick gloves, so those didn’t hurt as much as they usually would’ve. “Hey. What were you expecting, anyway?”

Instead of answering right away, she studied him for a few minutes. Probably trying to decide whether he was making a lead-in to a squabble or being serious. He was actually attempting to get a straight answer from her, so he smoothed out his face as best he could.

“More in-fighting, I suppose. Back then, I threw you into the deal because I had to. Mostly.” She plucked her cigarette from her lips and blew a few rings to watch them dissolve in the mists. “He did need you. And for the longest time, I couldn’t decide whether I hated you for that, or liked you—because if he hadn’t needed you, then I never would have had a chance. Or hell, even admired you. But there wasn’t enough time, and in the end, I was just tired and afraid for him and dying.”

The creaking and clanking of a boat passing nearby briefly silenced their conversation. Lancelot absentmindedly glanced over the rail, spending a few moments looking for a sign of it. But he gave up pretty fast; he didn’t need to see it to know it was out there, so why waste the effort?

Anyway, some things were better if not looked at directly. Like Whitechapel in general. Arthur had asked for details about what had happened that night, but even after pooling their knowledge, Lancelot and Guin still couldn’t figure out the whole story. It was likely that the only people to know what was going to Merlin’s mind—and Vivien’s—were dead. If not, then they’d long since melted into the kind of anonymity that even the best private eye couldn’t penetrate. That part of town was just a mystery; no one person ever was truly sure of himself while within its boundaries.

“I like it better now. Everything went wrong then,” Guin suddenly said. She turned to curve against Lancelot’s side, tucking herself under his arm. Yeah, it took advantage of his body heat, but he got some of hers in return, so it wasn’t quite an unequal sharing. “We wore ourselves out on the wrong battlefields. Not so much now.”

“Not so much?” Lancelot repeated, sucking on his cigarette. He half-closed his eyes against the new flood of relaxing prickles sluicing into his blood and slouched against the pillar. Having indoor plumbing and coffee and smokes definitely improved the quality of life.

A soft snort ghosted just under his chin as Guin turned a condescending smirk up at him. “Still a little, because of you. Arthur never cared about his sword nearly as much as he did you. I told you—he loves you. He didn’t need you to go after Excalibur that last time.”

“Well, _I_ needed to go after it.” He took one last hit off the butt before smashing it out on the railing, then flicking it over the side. “Jesus. He’s still carrying my swords around with him.”

“It’s all he had of you. If he wanted to see me, he only had to go visit our descendents.” Guin grinned and nipped playfully at his jaw, which was still a bit sore from Ambrose’s shoe. Bitch. “And I know you had to. That’s why I let you go. And that’s why I woke up Arthur after you left.”

Lancelot rolled his eyes and finally allowed his own smile to come out. “It’s so nice to know where your loyalties lie.”

“I’m not losing this time.” Goddamn it, she had sharp elbows.

Fortunately, a car pulled up just then and distracted them. A few minutes later, Arthur emerged from the fog, a satisfied expression on his face and a long bundle beneath his arm. “About time someone updated those contracts. But that’s all settled now.”

He went past Lancelot to the railing, on which he set the package while he unwrapped it. When a familiar length of steel emerged from the cloth, Lancelot wasn’t particularly surprised. He was, however, startled when Arthur swung Excalibur out over the rail and looked as if he was going to drop the thing.

“What are you doing?” Before the other man could, Lancelot pushed off the pillar and grabbed his arm. A quick check of Arthur’s eyes showed that the man was sober and apparently sane. And hell, even a little laughing, because Lancelot now had caught up with the other two, and he was still a little behind. Which annoyed him a fucking lot, since he was the detective.

But it didn’t take too long for that glint to disappear into seriousness, as usual. Arthur pressed his lips together and pulled the sword back in, laying it flat across his hands. His expression as he looked at it was a bit peculiar, like he was about to…well, deep-six a weighty bit of history.

“This served me well in its time,” he said in a quiet tone, studying the slight gleam on the blade. “But it’s caused more trouble and bloodshed than good lately. And I don’t need it now.”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy?” Not that Lancelot actually knew whether that was the right phrase or not, but it sounded right. Anyway, Guin wasn’t laughing at him, so it couldn’t be too far off the mark.

The other man lifted and dropped a shoulder, sliding one hand down to finger the hilt. “I would have done anything to save you.” His voice had dropped even lower, so Lancelot had to practically mold himself to Arthur to hear. It’d also slid into a language that wasn’t English or Welsh or Briton at all. “But I couldn’t. So I believed in what Guin said and waited. And…three years after she died, I was cut down in a skirmish. But I came back. Then I thought it was the sword, because they’d buried it with me.”

“They buried you?” Guin exclaimed, coming up to them.

“I suppose I should be happy they didn’t burn me.” Arthur turned to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “But decades passed, and it was too much. So I went to war and I left this at home. You’ll note I failed to stay dead.”

Lancelot tightened his grip on Arthur’s arm. “I note that you’re still the same suffering moron you always were.”

That got him a smile pressed into his cheek. Then Arthur turned back to the mists and the water below, and stretched out his arms so he held the sword far beyond the rail. “Let the rest of the world have the legend. I’m not it.”

It tumbled down tip over hilt, a glittering, gleaming arc-whirl of silver. And for a moment, Lancelot almost thought he saw a burst of light rise to meet it.

Great. Now his eyes were freezing and playing tricks on him. He pulled Arthur’s arm back in, then let his hand glide down the other man’s arm to wrap around icy fingers; the idiot had forgotten gloves. “Well, I’ll hope you understand when I say I’d like to hang onto mine a little longer.”

“Why? A shotgun’s much more useful and more easy to hide,” Guin objected, but she wasn’t trying too hard. She shivered, then snuggled into the open flaps of Arthur’s coat. “Come on. Buy us lunch. You can afford to.”

“I can,” Arthur agreed. “Now.”


	6. Post-Story: Family Affairs

God knew what Gawain and Arthur and Guin had come up to tell the police about Whitechapel—well, not that much of an explanation was ever needed to explain that district. Law enforcement didn’t like it in there, decent people didn’t like it in there, hardened criminals didn’t even like it in there if they weren’t twisted backwards somewhere inside. Lancelot sure as hell didn’t like it in there, and for once, he was happy to let the story blow right past him.

For the moment, anyway. He had goosefeather-stuffed silk pillows cushioning his slouch, champagne-grade cigarettes and Arthur’s head nestled in his lap. Guin was sitting next to them, legs tucked up beneath her and a bottle of brandy busily tucking itself into her, so her tongue was relatively occupied. Occasionally she’d lean down to share a mouthful with Arthur, who’d drink it slow from her and then resume his lazy kissing and licking of Lancelot’s wrist. Fingers. Palm, with teeth grazing the hollow. “I don’t remember you having a thing for hands,” Lancelot murmured, not especially protesting about it.

“I remember and I can’t, because it’s been so long.” Arthur moved, pressed his cheek against Lancelot’s stomach. His breath filtered warm and moist through the fabric of Lancelot’s shirt. “And you’re different, too.”

He lifted a hand to trace over Lancelot’s side, and Lancelot had a sudden recollection of frenzied caresses over seemingly nothing. Except now he also had a peculiar ghosting tingle and a memory of an arrow, painful and burning. “Your scars aren’t the same,” Arthur added, nuzzling that spot. “So I’m relearning them, one at a time.”

“Always methodical.” Guin swigged her brandy, then leaned over Lancelot to set the half-empty bottle on the side-table with exaggerated care. Her eyes were brighter than usual, but not so much so as to explain why she then draped herself around Lancelot and nipped at his ear.

Well, if she wanted to, she wanted to. Anyway, he wasn’t so stupid as to complain until after her teeth were away from his softer bits, so Lancelot let her and just curved his arm around her head so he could keep smoking. “You two ended up having a kid after all.”

“Hmm. I never had a chance to see him up close, though.” Sadness faded in and out of Guin’s voice as she sank back, dropping down to snuggle against Arthur’s chest. “Was he…?”

“He grew up very well,” Arthur told her, suddenly sober. 

Lancelot threaded his fingers through the other man’s hair, which brought about a slight lightening in Arthur’s face. “You thinking of starting over?” he asked the other two. He was joking. A little. Maybe his gut was a bit worried.

Guin looked like she’d swallowed something twice the size of her throat, which wasn’t too unexpected; modern medicine aside, she couldn’t be too enthusiastic about a second try at what had killed her the first time around. Surprisingly enough, Arthur also looked rather reluctant.

“I’m not sure that that’s possible.” He twirled a lock of Guin’s hair around his finger, then pressed it to his lips. “We had our son before I died the first time. And I never did have any others—” faint blush and nervous look “—with the, ah, occasional—”

“—fuck. Which is what Lancelot and I were to each other before you showed up again.” She looked like she was enjoying herself entirely too much. “And I can understand if you’re tired of babysitting.”

Torn between amusement and annoyance, Lancelot put out his cigarette and slid the hand he had in Arthur’s hair a little further down, curling it invitingly around the other man’s neck. “I bet. Guin’s grandbrats had to be a hell of a handful—”

Arthur kissed him. Sensibly enough, since that kept him and Guin from getting into a squabble. And then it was less sensible, and Lancelot couldn’t help grinning as he drifted down the pillows.


	7. Post-Story: Bystander

Tristan finished pouring out the three tiny glasses, then slid them across the bar to Lancelot. As he stood back, his hands seemed to flip and swing the bottles back into their places all by themselves.

Show-off. But the man could do that with knives, too, so Lancelot didn’t roll his eyes until he was tilting his head back to drain the last drops of the first glass. He didn’t swallow right away, but instead rolled the slow-burn liqueur around his mouth as he put the glass back. “Huh. Cherry.”

“This one is almost like Falernian,” the other man quietly said, pushing the second glass forward.

“And my virgin aunt sucks off—wait, what’d you say?” That wine hadn’t existed in…and Tristan wasn’t a history buff, as far as Lancelot knew. Not that Lancelot had much of a clue about what the man did in his free time, aside from get screwed hard by Gawain, but in any case, there was still no reason for Tristan to throw out a comparison like that and expect Lancelot to get it.

Very deliberately, Lancelot put both palms on the counter and got off the stool. Then he leaned over the bar and gave Tristan his best dead-eyed stare.

It didn’t even make a dent in the other man’s composure. But just before Lancelot’s eyes dried out completely and thus made him sit back down, he did have the privilege of catching Tristan blinking. “Excuse me?” Lancelot rephrased in a nicer tone. In non-English.

Tristan shrugged. “I was wondering if you’d remembered. No one saw you fall and get back up except for a boy in the street, and he thought he was having a nightmare.”

“You…since when did you know?” Lancelot glanced about, but didn’t see anyone: he’d dropped by while Arthur took Guin shopping, and Gawain was off in the back of the warehouse, digging up a rare order.

“The day before I found Gawain. A car ran me over.” Cool as ice, Tristan picked up the third glass and drained it. He glided the two empty glasses into the sink so fast Lancelot almost didn’t see it. “He doesn’t, by the way. None of the rest do.”

So…Tristan had known for just about as long as Lancelot had known him. He’d sat in Lancelot’s office and watched Lancelot and Guin scuffle around him and known, and he’d tailed Arthur and could have made a guess at least. He really _had_ been laughing at them, all this time.

A second later, Lancelot had wriggled his head free of Tristan’s arm just in time to see Gawain come in. The other man stopped, stared, blinked. Then he carefully set down the crate of wine he’d been holding. “Lancelot? Why are you strangling Tristan?”

“Because—” Something pinched Lancelot’s ribs hard. He glanced down to see Tristan…actually looking desperate, which startled him into being nice. And into letting go, then straightening up his suit. “Hell, do I need a reason?”

Gawain glared. Picked up the crate again and stalked off. “He’d better be all right when I come back.”

Tristan watched the other man go with naked relief on his face. “Thank you.”

“Sure. Though I’ve no idea what…” Lancelot grumbled, sinking back down on his seat. He poked a finger into the last glass and tasted it. Goddamn it, Tristan was right—almost like the old stuff.

“I’m not going to kill him just so he can remember, and he wouldn’t believe it if I only told him.” Wistfulness flickered over Tristan’s face, but was chased off by a kind of hopeless, quiet love a second before his expression smoothed out again. “I can wait.”

Lancelot gave the other man a sharp look. Then he drank half the wine and shoved the other half at Tristan. “Don’t let it go too long.”

“It won’t be.” Tristan drained the glass, a set expression on his face that discouraged Lancelot from asking what the hell the other man meant by that. So Lancelot let it pass, but he didn’t intend to forget about it.


	8. Pre-Story: Femme Fatale

Lazy-fingered, slack-eyed, she took languorous drags on her stained ivory cigarette holder and blew them back out as so many ominous thunderheads. They spiraled high up above her head, only to be shredded into meaningless fragments by the slow-spinning fan.

Her lips curved upwards, but her nails dug hard into the mattress beneath her. “You didn’t think you could hold that girl this time, did you?”

Merlin ignored her. He was a stump gnarled long before his time, crouched over his bowl of muddy water and seeing nothing but what he wanted to see. Whereas she saw everything that she didn’t want to see, but knew it for the truest truth.

“Even then, she left you for him. And that was when this land cried for you. It shan’t do it again.” Vivien sucked in another draft of the sweet-poisoned smoke, feeling its tendrils curl in behind her eyes and hook deep into them. It hurt. She gasped once, arched up into it and stretched out her hands for the long red locks that would be her downfall, for the green eyes glimpsed this afternoon among the streetwalkers that she knew she would be seeking out before nightfall.

It made her feel a little sorry for him. He was the strongest man she knew, and once, the wisest as well. But he’d fallen long and hard, and he refused to learn the crawl that preceded walking once again. She’d loved him for that once, and she supposed that in a way, she still did.

“The story’s done, the players are moving on their road. Let it be.” Gently, as if they were not already frozen to each other, she sat up and drew a hand down his back. Beneath the thin wrinkles of his shirt, his muscles bunched and shivered towards her, and for a moment, he almost came.

But that moment passed. The bowl fell and the water spilled, and Merlin twisted about to yank her wrist-first into his implacability. “Silence, woman. You died too early to know what you’re talking about. Whitechapel’s soil still holds enough power. If I only had the right tool to call it out—”

“—it wouldn’t answer,” she hissed, snapping at him. When he slapped her, she raked her teeth over his hand, and when he flung her off the bed for that, she laughed at him. “You’re a poorer copy. You’re a dreamer who thinks he was there, who dares contend with his elders and betters. You’ll fail.”

“Then I’ll try again,” he growled, turning away.

Vivien pulled herself off the floor and climbed back into his lap. This time, she was not soft and her hands roused him too quickly for him to refuse: weakness of men. “No, you won’t. I’m tired of seeing you diminish yourself.” She purred into his rough arms and welcomed the ripping pain, because then she’d remember past the smoke. “I’ll keep you in the wood with me, sleeping tenderly. And we’ll rot together this time.”


	9. Pre-Story: Deathbed Confession

Beyond the door, she could hear Arthur and Merlin spitting low, furious words at each other. Occasionally Arthur’s voice would rise and regain some of its former fire, but it would always sink. Never so much that the other man could overwhelm it, but far enough for Guinevere to turn her head to the side and try to clench her fists. Even that slight movement widened the tear inside of her and she bit against her cry, while at her feet the midwife gasped in horror and blanched. Not, however, as white as Guinevere’s own skin.

There hadn’t been enough time, she thought. Those hands should have been red with blood, tan with the sun, or even pale with leisure, which she would have preferred to this slow clawing drag into the dark. And Arthur’s eyes reflected that blackness.

She hadn’t known she had loved him until she had seen that final shadow add itself to his gaunt face and had found herself raging against it. Respected him, yes. And she had come to understand that she needed him for his sword-arm, for his banner, for his justice that smoothed over what they both welded roughly together with war. Guinevere had been too long in the wilderness to think like the queen and not the general, but Arthur could do it. She’d hated to admit it, but she had had to, in the end.

And in the end, it hadn’t been a marriage of convenience. Though he still mourned his closest friend and best knight and…yes, sharpest fragment of his heart. Sometimes she missed that man as well, for Arthur had never been the same. And she had spent too much of herself to keep fighting on that front.

Guinevere squeezed her eyes shut against another long, harsh shake of pain, then relaxed as best she could. Her hand dropped over the side of the bed and dangled so it could nearly feel the calling of the cool, damp earth. It would be pleasant and calm there, but she had never been one for comfort. Clenching her teeth, Guinevere snarled back at the song of her Britain.

_I gave you your greatest legend. I kept him here to see you rise. Give me back the man. I don’t care what it takes, who it takes—let me see him again. Let there be more time, somehow._

She heard one faint whisper and made a wild lunge at it, catching hold just as arms seized her waist and cradled her against the hard shards of black that were overtaking her.

“Guinevere!” Arthur was staring horrified at the masses of blood-soaked cloth that were mounded between her legs. “Don’t move. You’ll make it worse.”

“It’s already the worst,” she whispered, trying to close her fingers around his hand. But all she could manage was a touch. “You’ll see us again. He and I—wait, Arthur. We’ll be there.”

He didn’t understand and caught her hand to his mouth, closing his eyes. But Arthur could never bring himself to soften the way, and so he looked at her again.

She smiled the way she did after a victory, with the bodies of her enemies beneath her feet. “_Wait_. We’ll come to you again. Though it be beyond the times of our children and grandchildren…wait.”

And, comprehending, he bathed her fading eyes in a few quiet tears.


	10. Missing Scene: Recognition

Like each one was of the thinnest glass, he tiptoed down the stairs. His hands started shaking, and then so did his breath, but by then the car was in sight. Usually Arthur didn’t bother with a driver, but something prescient this morning had made him request one from the hotel staff, and he was glad he had. There was no way he could drive; he was having enough trouble remaining calm enough not to attract any casual attention from the crowded sidewalks.

Once safely ensconced within the black leather and chrome, he leaned over and pressed his folded hands to his mouth in an effort not to betray himself. Then he closed his eyes, pretending to doubt, to search his memories in order to make a comparison even though one wasn’t necessary. They hadn’t changed—and by that he included not only physical resemblance, but little gestures of the head and hands, angle of the shoulders and chin. Line of the mouth in humor or seriousness. Inflection of the voice.

It hurt. He’d nearly outwaited pain, but once he bowed the slightest bit to it, all of it came roaring back.

For one wild moment, he wanted to throw himself out of the car, down the street and up the stairs. His hand even made it to the door handle and his heel was turning to brace his weight when his reason reasserted itself—to his fear, for what would they make of a crazed man bursting into their office, shouting of things that were no longer even credible in the modern age? They would make a disappearance, for it was obvious they hadn’t remembered. And Arthur would lose them again.

He had to wait again. Drawing in a breath, Arthur hesitantly reached for the pain and embraced it to him again, forcing himself to settle in the middle of it. It had been so long already that a little longer shouldn’t cost him much. After all, he had little left that was dear to him, so he had nothing to lose.

But that wasn’t even true anymore. And Arthur laughed, low and hysterical beneath his breath while his professionally stoic driver ignored him.


	11. Post-Story: Spirit

“Some eggnog,” Lancelot laughed, stumbling over a side-step. He lost his balance and fell against Arthur’s side so he could feel the vibrations of the other man’s gentle laughter against his ribs. A few feet away, Guin was lying on the couch and deep into the bliss of the drunken, cheeks rosy and lips red-bitten from her and Arthur’s extended tongue-sharing session earlier. “She doesn’t usually go down that fast.”

The next time Lancelot skipped a step, Arthur had to grab his waist to set him back upright. And Arthur’s hands stayed there, fingers rippling slightly as Lancelot’s clumsy fingers searched for holds on Arthur’s shoulders, neck, arms. “You did let her make it. I suspect more of the rum went into her than into the eggnog.”

“Compliments of Gawain, and bless him for sharing the good brew.” There was soft tinkling music coming from the radio in the corner, and it had a beat to it, but for the life of him, Lancelot couldn’t figure it out. Every time he tried to match it, he only ended up trampling Arthur’s toes.

Not that Arthur seemed to mind. He winced a few times, but humored Lancelot and slowly spun them around the room, carefully swinging Lancelot out of the way of various pieces of furniture, Guin’s purse, discarded coats and hats…Arthur’s hands slid down an inch from Lancelot’s waist, cutting off what remained of Lancelot’s observational skills. The other man, on the other hand, wasn’t looking anywhere but Lancelot. Occasionally a wondering smile would steal across Arthur’s face, but mostly he simply looked content and satisfied to be partnering an inebriated idiot.

Well, not quite as bad as Bors, Lancelot soothed himself. He resettled his arms around Arthur’s neck and leaned forward to rub his nose past Arthur and peck at Arthur’s upper lip. “It still feels odd, you know. I didn’t—we didn’t celebrate Christmas before.”

“No. If I remember right, I usually spent the evening in prayer, and you usually got drunk and picked a fight with someone.” Regret dragged at the corner of Arthur’s mouth, turning his kiss wry. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Sorry about what? Did you save that apology all these years?” It was meant as a joke, but wasn’t taken that way. Lancelot sighed and looped himself closer to Arthur, restricting their movements so they were doing little more than rocking in place. His hands he let drift downwards, feeling through Arthur’s shirt for the thin scars that criss-crossed the other man’s back.

After a while, Arthur ducked his head and, eyes closed, pressed his forehead to Lancelot’s. “It was a very, very long time for me to do nothing but think,” he said in a thick voice.

“So stop thinking.” Fingers in Arthur’s waistband, Lancelot rumpled out the shirt so he could stroke up beneath the fabric. He pushed till he could slide his cheek past Arthur’s and lick an invitation along Arthur’s neck, which was swiftly taken up.

* * *

Later, when Lancelot was a lazy crumple on the floor beside the couch and Arthur was quiet and calm on top of him, Guin finally woke up. She took one look over the side and sighed, propping up her head with one arm. The other trailed fingers over the sword-scars of Arthur’s back till he grabbed them and kissed their tips.

“He never could think when you were around,” was her comment, which made Lancelot briefly wonder as to just how deeply asleep she’d been. “I heard all about it from Gawain, and Galahad, and hell, even Bors afterward.”

“They remembered me?” Lancelot grinned. “Good boys.”

Guin rolled her eyes. “Pompous jackass.”

“Stop that,” Arthur drowsily ordered. Then it was quiet for a few moments till he lifted his head and stared at the two of them. “My God. I always wondered what you two being quiet would look like.”

“Oh, shut up.” And Lancelot dragged him back down, just to make sure of that.


End file.
